Runtime environment for virtualizing information technology appliances

1. A computer program product for virtualizing information technology (IT) appliances comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer usable program code embodied therewith, the computer usable program code comprising:

IT appliance hosting facilities software implemented at a layer of abstraction above a host for a virtual machine operating system, which is implemented in a layer of abstraction above hardware, where the IT appliance hosting facilities software comprises programmatic code functioning as virtualized hardware upon which a plurality of IT appliance software modules are able to concurrently run, wherein the IT appliance hosting facilities software layer is configured to provide caching, application level security, and a standardized framework for running the plurality of IT appliance software modules configured in conformance with the standardized framework, wherein said IT appliance hosting facilities software comprises:

an appliance runtime environment configured to abstract host system details from IT appliance software modules, wherein the appliance runtime environment is completely dependent upon resources of the host; and

platform support configured to provide a plurality of services specific to said IT appliance hosting facilities that are able to be invoked by components of the appliance runtime environment, wherein the appliance runtime environment comprises a plurality of discrete components to interact with the IT appliance software modules, said components comprising an administrative interface; a debugging and profiling interface; an appliance interface; an operational interface; system appliance-level macros, user-defined appliance-level macros, a macros appliance instance manager, a security manager, an inter-appliance communication area; a host resources manager, and an operational manager.

2. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein each IT appliance software module is functionally equivalent to a corresponding non-virtualized IT appliance excepting that hardware of the corresponding non-virtualized IT appliance is replaced by the virtualized hardware provided by the IT appliance hosting facilities software, wherein the non-virtualized IT appliance is a specialized device comprising optimized hardware and software designed for handling a discrete set of infrastructure tasks for a computing environment.

3. A virtualized IT appliance software module stored in a storage medium comprising: computer usable program code configured to be executed by virtualized hardware provided by IT appliance hosting facilities software, wherein the computer usable program code comprises an IT appliance software module stored in a discrete logical partition of a storage medium, wherein the IT appliance software module is functionally equivalent to a corresponding non-virtualized IT appliance excepting that hardware of the corresponding non-virtualized IT appliance is replaced by the virtualized hardware provided by the IT appliance hosting facilities software, wherein the non-virtualized IT appliance is a specialized device comprising optimized hardware and software designed for handling a discrete set of infrastructure tasks for a computing environment, wherein said IT appliance software module is configured to communicate through the IT appliance hosting facilities software with other IT appliance software modules concurrently executing on top of the IT appliance hosting facilities software.

4. The virtualized IT appliance software module of claim 3 , wherein the IT appliance hosting facilities software is implemented at a layer of abstraction above a virtual machine host, which is implemented in a layer of abstraction above a hardware layer of a computing system, wherein the IT appliance hosting facilities software is configured to provide caching, application level security, and an standardized framework for running the plurality of IT appliance software modules comprising said IT appliance software module.

5. The virtualized IT appliance software module of claim 4 , wherein said IT appliance software module is configured to communicate through the IT appliance hosting facilities software with at least one virtualized operating systems executing on top of the virtual machine host.

6. The virtualized IT appliance software module of claim 4 , wherein the virtual machine host is a virtual machine operating system.