Are there any plans to update the Virtual Edition to version 6.0?

[Dexter]

I am planning to upgrade my GSA to 6.0 and would like to test the
import/export works before the actual upgrade procedure. I downloaded
the Virtual Edition and it's currently at 5.2.

When can we expect the virtual edition to be upgraded to 6.0?

[Google Enterprise Labs Support]

Dear appliance developers,

The virtual GSA was produced for developers many months ago as a way
to allow developers to test integrations, create OneBox modules, etc.
Since the release, however, the actual hardware appliance has had
several major updates, and the virtual edition is somewhat behind.
Since downloading an updated virtual GSA would require massive amounts
of space on customer harddrives, we will not be upgrading the virtual
GSA. Accordingly, we have taken it down so that developers do not
continue to create integrations to older software (integrations that
may not work on the newer versions). If you are still interested in
creating add-ons, testing integrations, connectors, or OneBox modules
as you are on the virtual GSA, you of course still can do so. Please
email appli...@google.com to contact our sales department to do so.

Thank you!

Cyrus Mistry
Product Manager, Google Search Appliance

[Pablo Solera]

Those are bad news.
I´ve used the virtual appliance for a long time, when I was out of the
office to develope admin console tweaks.
It would be great to have a virtual appliance with the latest API
avaliable, and all the distributed crawling features were waiting for
a "virtual test".

[Michael Cizmar]

I agree with Pablo. We don't have much space concerns since the
virtual appliance since it and vmware can be placed on a flash usb
drive. The virtual appliance was never really stable. It was
unsupported. That said, it did provided a nice quick environment to
do basic development on for security integration or run a small
demo.

Hope we can see it again in the future.

Michael Cizmar | MC+A
Google Enterprise Partner
http://shop.mcplusa.com | twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mcplusa

[Perry]

The disappearance of the GSA Virtual edition is distressing. I now
cannot develop or test on anything but my production Appliance. Bad
thing my friends, Bad things...

[keif]

I'd second the concern of losing it - space isn't an issue (unless it
is in terms of "too many people downloading it" kind of way) as I
setup a machine specifically for testing on the VGSA that I can't do
on a prod GSA (plus, licensing limits, etc).

This limits the kind of experimentation and creativity one can take
with a VGSA - I'd love to contribute back to the SAYT and other GSA
projects, but without a up-to-date VGSA to run with, it kind of makes
the GSA a "out of the box" solution except for companies that can
afford to have one "lie around for testing."

My vote - update and bring it back, or at least give a real reason.
Too much space? Yeah, it's a virtual GSA, of course it'll take up
space! Anyone that downloads it recognizes this and is of the
technical mindset that would recognize that having it run locally may
not be the smartest approach.

-kb

[Svein Erik]

I'm also missing the VGSA, I it was very good to have your own "GSA"
to test with.

-SE

[mmccloskey]

Labs team:

This is a big miss especially for organizations like ours where we are
servicing numerous clients on the GSA. The VGSA allows us to spin
these up in a bubble and hand them over cleanly. PLEASE bring this
back.

Thx!
Mike

[Manoj Wartikar]

Labs Team,
An easy way is to enable the update manager on the VGSA and we could
download the latest updates from the support site & apply to the 5.2
VGSA itself.
That way space issue will be resolved and we developers will have the
VGSA for quick development.
MAnoj

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[Edward]

We ended up purchasing an additional device to provide functionality
that the VGSA would provide.