Patent ID: 8352936

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for creating a virtual appliance in a virtualization environment, the virtual appliance representing hardware and software aspects or products of an underlying target environment, wherein the method comprises: implementing a framework, wherein the framework comprises a knowledge representation scheme for describing library knowledge to specify one or more libraries that are used for interaction between two or more appliance components; using the framework to: instrument, using an instrumenting module, the one or more libraries via use of the library knowledge; record, using a parameter recording module, each of one or more communication parameter values in an original environment; and package, using a packaging module, one or more disk images, wherein the one or more disk images contain the one or more instrumented libraries, the one or more recorded communication parameter values, an open virtualization format (OVF) component, a map that implements mappings between the OVF component and the one or more communication parameter values, and a translation logic, to create a virtual appliance for distribution and deployment at a target new environment; and enabling, via the created virtual appliance and the translation logic, translation of the one or more communication parameter values to one or more new communication parameter values when running in a new environment so that each of one or more target environment products that depend on the one or more libraries can be run in the new environment without any preconfigured product level reconfiguration.