Flash UI
rPath X6 sports a Flash-based UI, which manages to pack a good deal of system administration detail into its series of tabs and collapsible menu lists.
vSphere Target
I connected rPath X6 to the vSphere installation in our lab, and found that I could launch new instances of pre-existing VM templates.
Appliance Images
I tested with VMware and Amazon EC2 images, but rPath X6 supports a handful of others, including those for Hyper-V, XenServer and KVM.
Platform Support
rPath X6 supports CentOS 5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Window Server as platforms for building software appliances.
Deploy to EC2
After getting my appliance in order on our local vSphere installation, it was easy to create and upload a version of my image to Amazon EC2.
Package Import
I added the latest version of WordPress to my test appliance by supplying the URL to the most recent archive of the project’s code.
Appliance Configuration
Appliances set up for configuration pick up controls in the X6 interface for manipulating config file variables and scripts.
Configuration Setup
To enable the configuration tab in the X6 interface, I first had to create a package of XML and script files to carry out the configuration operations.