Much of PHP’s success can be attributed to it being free and open, able to run on nearly every operating system, and being easy to use and learn.   Yet the same things that have made it so successful in the open source community have historically hindered its commercial success.   But why?

Quite simply PHP is a scripted language.   Unlike C programs which need pre-compilation to run, PHP is compiled and executed on the fly by the PHP engine.  Perl, JavaScript, and Shell script all execute in a similar manner.  This makes PHP very flexible and friendly to open source and hobbyist developers, but it essentially requires you to “give away” your source code in order to distribute your program.

Of course commercial developers attempting to make a profit on their work won’t  want to give away their code, not if they expect to make money! But the PHP market was huge and lucrative, so unsurprisingly a company stepped in to offer a solution.  That solution is IonCube, and here’s how it works.

First, the commercial PHP developer will write their application.   When it’s finished, the developer will use the IonCube program to encode the raw, human-readable PHP source code in a proprietary binary format.  This protects the underlying source code from prying eyes by turning it into a jumble of unreadable goobleygook.

Next,  the application is purchased by an end user.  After the purchase, the application developer provides the customer with a special key which is used to “unlock” the encoded source.

Finally, the customer installs the IonCube Loader on their web server, which acts as a on-the-fly decoder for the coded application.    At no time is the user ever able to view the PHP source code:  all the decoding happens inside the web server via the IonCube loader.   This keeps the application code a secret for the developer, as well as allowing fine control over the licensing of their application via the unlock key.

Though IonCube had a rocky start at its debut in 2002 (thanks somewhat to vocal opposition by strong open source proponents), it has slowly become the de-facto standard for distributing non-free PHP applications.   Though not all web hosts support it, The Linux Fix offers the IonCube Loader with every web hosting plan we provide.  We hope that it gives you the freedom of using whatever PHP application you choose, without much fuss!

So now that you know what VMware ESX and ESXi are, let’s get on with it.  We started implementing ESXi internally, and to our dismay discovered one other feature that is missing from ESXi – the ability to clone virtual machines and to create templates.  Without cloning and templates, you lose out on one of the biggest advantage of using virtual machines, VMware or otherwise – rapid deployment.  I guess VMware wants you to purchase ESX if you need these features.

Unsatisfied with that assessment, I started digging around and came up with a procedure to be able to clone VM’s.  It’s more manual than using the ‘Clone to Virtual Machine…’ option in Virtual Center with ESX, but that’s what you pay the big bucks for – ease of management.  In a nutshell, this is what I did:

1. Build a virtual machine with your OS of choice.  *cough* Linux *cough*
2. Enable ssh into the ESX host
3. ssh into the host
4. Go into the datastore in which you created your VM
5. Make a copy of the VM you just built

There you have your template.  In order to deploy it, it’s not as bad as one might think for a manual process.

1. Go into the datastore you are going to keep your new VM.
2. Make a new directory – I always call it the same as the short name of the VM I am creating
3. Copy only the .vmdk files into the new directory you’ve created.
4. Logout, and fire up the Virtual Infrastructure Client, and create a new VM as you normally would.
5. When it asks about the disk, choose “Use an existing disk,” and select the copy of the vmdk.

The new Virtual Machine will have been created with the disk.  Boot the server up and change the network settings and customize to your heart’s content.  I’ve thrown in a sample session of creating the template and deploying it below.  Note that in you have to build the source VM first.


[root@tlf1 ~]# ssh tlfesx1
root@tlfesx1’s password:

Tech Support Mode successfully accessed.
The time and date of this access have been sent to the system logs.

WARNING - Tech Support Mode is not supported unless used in
consultation with VMware Tech Support.

~ # cd /vmfs/
/vmfs/devices/ /vmfs/volumes/
~ # cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/
/vmfs/volumes/4946cee9-8d78d96a-2302-00137250f7df # mkdir template
/vmfs/volumes/4946cee9-8d78d96a-2302-00137250f7df # cp -p tlfsource/*.vmdk template/
/vmfs/volumes/4946cee9-8d78d96a-2302-00137250f7df # mkdir tlfnewsrvr1
/vmfs/volumes/4946cee9-8d78d96a-2302-00137250f7df # cp -p template/sda*.vmdk newserver1/