VMware vCenter Converter 4.0 has just been released. Don’t let this name fool you cause Converter is still also available as a stand alone solution for P2V’ing your servers! You can find the release notes here.
So what’s new?
- Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Linux (RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu) as source
- Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Windows Server 2008 as source
- Hot cloning improvements to clone any incremental changes to physical machine during the P2V conversion process
- Support for converting new third-party image formats including Parallels Desktop virtual machines, newer versions of Symantec, Acronis, and StorageCraft
- Workflow automation enhancements to include automatic source shutdown, automatic start-up of the destination virtual machine as well as shutting down one or more services at the source and starting up selected services at the destination
- Target disk selection and the ability to specify how the volumes are laid out in the new destination virtual machine
- Destination virtual machine configuration, including CPU, memory, and disk controller type
I think especially the hot cloning improvement, which copies incremental changes, and the workflow automation are really cool features. These are the kind of enhancements that will make your life a lot easier during migration projects.