[atlas] Atlas probe - virtual appliance?

On 6/18/13 20:07 , Daniel Suchy wrote:
> maybe should be interesting providing RIPE Atlas probe as an virtual
> appliance (VMWare, XEN, VirtualBox etc). Handling will be much easier
> and deployment cheaper (as no extra hardware will be required to run new
> probe).
>
> Virtual apliance should be still managed by RIPE NCC (like current
> hardware probes) in terms of upgrades and so on.
>
>
One thing to keep in mind is that, apart from the obvious issues with
getting reliable timings out of a virtual machine, this proposal may
have significant development and operational costs. These costs may be
high enough to offset the benefits of not having to buy new hardware.

Setting up Atlas on a VM may easily be more expensive than a probe.
Developing Atlas 'firmware' for common VMs may also cost enough that in
the end there aren't any savings.