Getting Started with the SUSE Appliance Toolkit

The SUSE Appliance Toolkit gives an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) the ability to quickly and easily develop their own software or virtual machine appliances based on SUSE Linux Enterprise.

Read about the SUSE Appliance Program here:

http://www.novell.com/partners/isv/appliance/

The Novell Media Gallery has several good demonstrations of the components of the SUSE Appliance Toolkit:

http://www.novell.com/media/?topic=SUSE+Appliance+Program

Including a demonstration of SUSE Studio Online:

http://www.novell.com/media/content/suse-studio-demonstration.html

If you want to get started immediately, create an account on SUSE Studio Online:

http://susestudio.com/

There are a couple of good resources on using SUSE Studio:

http://susestudio.com/help

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:SUSE_Studio

If you would prefer to have your own private instance of SUSE Studio, then you can download the SUSE Appliance Toolkit:

http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=TAexxUyzMik~

It is strongly recommended that you read the installation documentation for each component:

SUSE Studio Onsite – http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse_studio/
SUSE Lifecycle Management Server (SLMS) – http://www.novell.com/documentation/slms1/
WebYaST – http://www.novell.com/documentation/webyast/

When installing SUSE Studio Onsite, please note the machine requirements. SUSE Studio Onsite is distributed as a software appliance and must be installed on a physical machine with X86_64 (64 bit) and virtualization support, 8GB minimum of RAM (more is recommended), and a minimum of 100GB of disk space (though more is better). You can review these requirements in the deployment guide. The ATK Helper Guide should take you through the setup process:

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/12306/appliance-toolkit-atk-helper-guide

WebYaST provides a web based interface for managing appliances:

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:WebYaST

Another key tool for developing appliances, and is used by SUSE Studio is KIWI:

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:KIWI

There is also a setup guide to help you get started with KIWI:

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/10464/step-step-guide-set-kiwi-build-environment-sle

There are many good sources for support in building appliances:

SUSE Studio Forum: http://susestudio.com/forum
SUSE Studio IRC: irc.freenode.net #susestudio
KIWI mailing list: kiwi-users@lists.berlios.de
KIWI IRC: irc.freenode.net #opensuse-kiwi

Since you are building appliances with SUSE Linux Enterprise, the SUSE Product Information is also very useful:

http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse.html

I hope this gives you enough resources to get started building appliances with the SUSE ATK and SUSE Linux Enterprise!