VMware Converter ... out of beta and still free!

Gotta love VMware for having killer products that are free.  First VMware Server ... now VMware Converter.  Still haven't played with virtualization yet?  Now you really have no excuse :-)

VMware Announces Availability of VMware Converter 3 - Enterprise and Free Starter Editions

Newest Release of Migration Tool Speeds Move to Virtual World

PALO ALTO, Calif., January 29, 2007 — VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced the general availability of the Enterprise and Starter editions of VMware Converter 3, the newest release of its migration tool.   

“Customers are accelerating their migration from physical systems to a virtualized infrastructure, so the ability to perform large-scale conversions is important to the thousands of VMware customers who are standardizing on VMware virtual infrastructure,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of product marketing and solutions at VMware. “As the only freely available conversion tool on the market today, VMware Converter Starter also offers customers new to virtualization a simple path toward virtualizing their infrastructure.”

VMware Converter 3 automates the Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) and Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) conversion process for creating VMware virtual machines from physical machines, other virtual machine formats or third-party image formats. The VMware Converter Starter edition enables one conversion at a time and is free of charge.  The VMware Converter Enterprise edition enables multiple concurrent conversions and is available at no additional cost to VMware customers who have current support and subscription contracts for VMware VirtualCenter Management Server.  [more]

Comments

[Donnie Schexnayder]

This is great...we just started using virtualization a couple months ago. We started with a free virtual appliance that does content filtering and modified it for our own purposes. Works great so far.

It's cool to be able to back up the whole machine, move it to another VMWare Server box and clone it easily for testing without having to build a whole new system.

I just downloaded the free converter...hopefully it works as advertised.

[Bob Brown]

Thanks for the link. We are preparing to do a whole slew of server switches in the near future. I would like to take a few of them virtual.

[Glenn Kelley]

Jason - I have been watching this as well.

Although I am a bit displeased with a clocking issue from VMWare - they have a fantastic product line.

I have tested a few VMWare options within VineHosting and agree 100% having the ability to capture an entire system is awesome - especially @ this cost.

I am hoping this offering from VMWare will push the other Virtualization providers in the market to follow suite.