I once got in trouble with a woman I was dating because I bought her an “appliance” for Christmas.  It was a combination VCR/DVD player (this was a while ago) and she liked movies.  Go figure.  I’ve also gotten in trouble with my wife for *not* buying an appliance – in this case a new, energy efficient clothes dryer; she pays the electric bills.  So you would think that I would steer clear of appliances.  You would be wrong.

Database “appliances” are integrated packages of software including operating system, database software (e.g. DB2), and other useful features.  Sometimes these appliances are pre-configured and optimized on hardware servers as well.  Some prominent examples are IBM’s Smart Analytics System (ISAS) and Oracle’s Exadata.  ISAS is the follow-on to IBM’s Balanced Configuration Unit (BCU) which clearly needed a new, better name.  ISAS combines InfoSphere Warehouse with IBM server hardware and a back-end storage system that provide a complete out-of-the-box solution.  The systems are “balanced” in terms of configured machine resources (i.e. CPU, memory, SAN) based on projected data volumes so you don’t have to spend weeks trying to figure all of that out.  That job has been done for you.  You can begin achieving ROI shortly after powering on the unit.

Appliances don’t always include hardware, however.  Some flavors of ISAS are VMWare images that can be deployed on existing hardware.  This benefits organizations which have established hardware standards in their enterprises and don’t want to deviate.

Want to get started with an appliance (and not get in trouble with your “significant other”)?  Check out this link on Channel DB2.  Anil Mahadev has put together Dubuntu, an all-in-one VMWare image DB2 appliance built on the open source Linux operating system Ubuntu.  It’s all *free*.  This is not a trial.  Using open source application development tools and DB2 Express-C, Anil has put together quite a cool package.

You can download Dubuntu at http://www.idug.org/anil-dubuntu/dubuntu-appliance.html from the IDUG website.  This is perfect for small – even one-person – development shops that can’t invest in expensive up-front software licensing.  If you are a DB2 for z/OS specialist and want to expand your skills to the distributed platforms, here’s a terrific tool.

With apologies to Cole Porter: “Do do that Dubuntu that you do so well.”