The adoption of Linux as the platform-of-choice for servers for Small and Medium Businesses faces the barrier of its complex installation process compared to pre-loaded Windows-based servers. By creating a highly customized, fool-proof software appliance based on Linux, one can create complex software solutions for SMBs and deploy them without a hassle. Linux is the only viable (economically and technically) platform for creating powerful software appliances and reduce deployment costs as well as total cost of ownership while providing powerful tools able to challenge any closed/proprietary offering in the market.

In this tutorial we will show how to create a customized version of Linux (RHEL 4) to produce a small business server with all necessary tools to manage, control, and share network resources, from files to bandwidth. The case is based on a real life situation. Software appliances are the base for in-house SaaS solutions.

Things such as customizing Anaconda, creating RPM packages, creating an installation wizard in C, localization, PHP-based management front-ends, among others will be discussed.