About Virtual Applications

A virtual application specifies and encapsulates the components of virtual machines and applications, and the operational policies and service levels associated with those components. A virtual application can be as simple as an individual virtual machine with a specific operating system (virtual appliance), or as complex as a complete corporate Web site. Each virtual machine in a virtual application contains a preinstalled, preconfigured operating system and might contain an application stack optimized to provide a specific set of services.

In the vSphere Web Services SDK, the VirtualApp managed object represents a virtual application. A VirtualApp object extends ResourcePool with the following capabilities:

• Store product information such as product name, vendor, properties, and licenses in vAppConfigInfo.
• Specify power-on and power-off sequence specification.
• Import and export of VirtualApp objects as OVF packages.
• Perform application-level customization using the OVF environment.