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A computer appliance is generally a separate and discrete hardware device with integrated software (firmware), specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. These devices became known as "appliances" because of their similarity to home appliances, which are generally "closed and sealed" – not serviceable by the owner. The hardware and software are pre-integrated and pre-configured before delivery to customer, to provide a "turn-key" solution to a particular problem. Unlike general purpose computers, appliances are generally not designed to allow the customers to change the software (including the underlying operating system), or to flexibly reconfigure the hardware. Another form of appliance is the virtual appliance, which has similar functionality to a dedicated hardware appliance, but is distributed as a software virtual machine image for a hypervisor-equipped device. ==Overview== Traditionally, software applications run on top of a general-purpose operating system, which uses the hardware resources of the computer (primarily memory, disk storage, processing power, and networking bandwidth) to meet the computing needs of the user. The main issue with the traditional model is related to complexity. It is complex to integrate the operating system and applications with a hardware platform, and complex to support it afterwards. By tightly constraining the variations of the hardware and software, the appliance becomes easily deployable, and can be used without nearly as wide (or deep) IT knowledge. Additionally, when problems and errors appear, the supporting staff very rarely needs to explore them deeply to understand the matter thoroughly. The staff needs merely training on the appliance management software to be able to resolve most of problems. In all forms of the computer appliance model, customers benefit from easy operations. The appliance has exactly one combination of hardware and operating system and application software, which has been pre-installed at the factory. This prevents customers from needing to perform complex integration work, and dramatically simplifies troubleshooting. In fact, this "turnkey operation" characteristic is the driving benefit that customers seek when purchasing appliances. To be considered an appliance, the (hardware) device needs to be integrated with software, and both are supplied as a package. This distinguishes appliances from "home grown" solutions, or solutions requiring complex implementations by integrators or Value-added resellers (VARs). The appliance approach helps to decouple the various systems and applications, for example in the data center. Once a resource is decoupled, in theory it can be also centralized to become shared among many systems, centrally managed and optimized, all without requiring changes to any other system. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Computer appliance」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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