While I was at jboye08, talking about enterprise search, Google snuck up from behind and surprised me with the release of the virtual edition of the Google Search Appliance. You can now download it from Google Code.

While I already knew Google had virtualized versions of the Appliance software (someone in a Google training pinged me that he found out they were working on identical VMs, not actual Appliances) it still came rather unexpected when the company released this to the public. It makes a lot of sense -- the Appliances aren't very feature-rich, to say the least, and a lot of functionality is being added by a growing group of resellers, integrators and developers. Releasing a VM to test against will certainly help this nascent community bloom.

Another added benefit, of course, is you can now actually try-before-you-buy. If you're considering getting a GSA, try the virtual machine first. The download obviously isn't really meant for pre-sales testing (which is why it was released relatively quietly on Google Code), but will do nicely for the purpose: even if you don't really doubt your choice, what have you got to lose? While it won't run on most laptops (hardware requirements advise you to use a dual core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and 40 GB of free space on a 7200 RPM or faster hard disk), many modern desktops should do nicely.

It makes me wonder whether in the future, you'll be able to buy Appliance VMs and pay by credit card, then just download the image and install it on your (virtualized) servers. Getting a closed "black box" (well, blue or yellow) to run in a server rack behind the firewall has met with some resistance from IT departments, and a VM may get more acceptance.

At any rate, the GSA and even the Mini aren't machines you'd want to buy on a whim. Try the VM, see for yourself how easy to use it is, but don't forget to push a little bit harder and try to do those extra things, which may be harder to accomplish than you'd think. Enterprise search isn't particularly suited to impulse buying, but at least now, you can think outside the box -- you should take your time doing so.