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Here at Sphere IT we have been busily adding to our list of templates, in order to save you time and energy in deployment.

When you have the right template available, deploying a new VM on Sphere IT becomes a five-minute exercise, where you don't have to worry about installing the basics on your virtual machine (such as a development environment, or essential software on top of the operating system). We are now offering Fedora, a Ruby stack, LAMP, Windows SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 (with the new Windows 8 "Modern" interface, formerly known as "Metro"!).

New Templates

Here's the list of recently added Sphere IT templates:

New Fedora 17 template

• Fedora 17 64-bit edition

New VMware templates

• VMware versions of templates are available

New Microsoft Windows Server 2008 templates - standard edition and enterprise edition

• Windows Server Standard edition 2008 R2 SP1 x64
• Windows Server Enterprise edition 2008 R2 SP1 x64

New Microsoft SQL Server 2012 templates – web edition and standard edition

• Windows Svr STD 2008 R2 SP1 x64 with SQL 2012 Web edition*
• Windows Svr STD 2008 R2 SP1 x64 with SQL 2012 Standard edition*

New Ruby stack templates

• Ubuntu 12.04 with Ruby, Git, Nginx, PostgreSQL
• Ubuntu 12.04 with Ruby, Git, Nginx, MySQL

New LAMP stack template

• CentOS 6.2 LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. 1)
• CentOS 6.2 WordPress stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. 1 x Wordpress)

New Ubuntu VPN appliance template

• Ubuntu 12.04 VPN x64
• Note: MS SQL instances cost more than standard templates

Template Benefits

How does a Sphere IT pre-built template save you time? Templates can be spun up on the Sphere IT cloud in minutes. Templates include the base operating system plus pre-installed and configured software aligned to common industry standards. This may save you hours or days of work in software installation and configuration.

Fedora Template Benefits

Sponsored by Red Hat, the Fedora Linux distribution has the solid driver support of a distro with major financial backing.

The Fedora distro innovates aggressively -- it is a fast-moving community-run Open Source project, driven by a global network of contributors.

Fedora is renowned as a secure choice of Linux distribution, featuring "Security-Enhanced Linux" (SELinux) mode.

SQL Template Benefits

Includes the latest version of Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

Both Web edition and standard Edition options.

Includes licensing.

VMware Template Benefits

Industry's most trusted hypervisor.

Have the option of selecting the hypervisor you want.

Ruby Template Benefits

Comes pre-configured with the latest versions of Ruby, Git, Nginx and a choice of either PostgreSQL or MySQL (database options).

Built based on common best practise, with input from the Ruby community.

No licensing costs: As the operating system is open source, there are no additional fees or charges for using the LAMP stack template vs. a proprietary licensed operating system.

Keeping it standard: Being a standard template in the Sphere IT cloud, customers can create as many servers of exactly the same Ruby configuration as is required, each with the exact same software components installed.

Wordpress Template Benefits

A complete Wordpress installation.

We’ve done all the hard work of installing and configuring the bits needed to run Wordpress.

Simply deploy it and log in to Wordpress!

LAMP Stack Benefits

Sphere IT now provide a pre-built LAMP server image that can be run on the Sphere IT cloud within minutes.

LAMP is essentially a server that runs Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

The LAMP software combination has become popular because it is open-source, easily adaptable, and bundled with most current Linux distributions, forming a solution stack of technologies that support either general purpose web servers or application servers.

Quicker to get started: Sphere IT have done the prep work - all of the latest LAMP software components have been downloaded and installed into the new LAMP template. Simply create a new virtual server: pick your instance size (CPU, memory, disk), select the new LAMP template, and click create. In minutes you’ll have a new LAMP virtual server.

Keeping it standard: Being a standard template in the Sphere IT cloud, customers can create as many of exactly the same LAMP cloud servers as is required, each with the exact same software components installed.

No licensing costs: As the operating system is open source, there are no additional fees or charges for using the LAMP stack template vs. a proprietary licensed operating system.

Michael Collins is the director of Sphere IT - a Managed IT Support company in London. He is a keen blogger who likes to write articles and news related to IT and technology.