VMware Server free as in beer

Nowadays, VMware has become an essential tool for ApSIC’s localization and internationalization testing team, effectively phasing out the former arrangements based on disk images.

So now it’s good news that the entry product for VWware server-grade line-up, VMware Server, will be available for free to entice businesses to start deploying server virtualization, with a view that they get some conversions to their currently pricey high-end server virtualization solutions.

I first learn about VMware, back in 1999 when I read a press release about a start-up that had released a product which would allow running Linux and Windows virtual machines on a Linux or Windows host operating system.

At that time we were frequently dual booting Windows NT Workstation and OS/2, so I wrote them to ask if they were planning to add OS/2 as either a guest or a host operating system, and they replied almost instantly saying that due to certain technical particularities, support for OS/2 was not feasible. (Fortunatelly, weeks later we deployed a solution to avoid frequent dual booting with a combination of Windows NT Terminal Server 4.0 and OS/2 client machines.)

We forgot about VMware for a while, and the main driver to revisit VMware in our testing process was a couple years ago, because when we expanded the testing lab with newer machines the only way to test Windows NT was on a virtual machine, due to the lack of drivers for new machines.

Ironically, lack of NT support for newer hardware was a good show-stopper to run into, because VMware has since become instrumental in our testing efforts!

Start Achieving the Benefits of Virtualization

The free VMware Server is based upon VMware’s proven virtualization technology. With this robust yet easy to use software you can:

• Accelerate server provisioning by building a virtual machine once and deploying it multiple times
• Easily evaluate software in ready-to-run virtual machines without installation and configuration
• Simplify IT testing of patches, new applications and operating systems by allowing systems administrators to test in a secure virtual machine environment and be able to roll back to a clean state by using the snapshot feature
• Re-host legacy operating systems such as Windows 2000, Windows NT Server 4.0 and Windows 2003 in a virtual machine running on new hardware and operating system
• Leverage pre-built, ready-to-run virtual appliances that include virtual hardware, operating system and application environments from the Virtual Appliance Marketplace

How Does VMware Server Work?

Install and run VMware Server as an application on top of a host Windows or Linux operating system. A thin virtualization layer partitions the physical server so you can run multiple virtual machines simultaneously on a single server.  Computing resources of the physical server are treated as a uniform pool of resources that can be allocated to virtual machines in a controlled manner.

VMware Server isolates each virtual machine from its host and other virtual machines, leaving it unaffected if another virtual machine crashes. Your data does not leak across virtual machines and your applications can only communicate over configured network connections. VMware Server encapsulates a virtual machine environment as a set of files, which are easy to back-up, move and copy.

Try VMware Server as the First Step to VMware Infrastructure

Start with VMware Server now, knowing that your virtual machines can easily be migrated to VMware Infrastructure later. VMware Infrastructure 3, the most widely deployed virtual infrastructure suite in the market, delivers improved service levels and operational efficiency by enabling centralized management, automatic load balancing, business continuity, power management and the ability to live migrate a virtual machine across physical machines to minimize service interruption.

Quick Look at VMware Player 2.50

As a reminder, VMware Player is free from VMware and is used to play virtual machine images. You can’t create them or do much tweaking, but it plays them well. Since I have VMware Server (also free) at work, I used it to create a test XP VM and installed the VMware client additions.

Side note: You don’t have to have VMware Server to create new images — there are alternatives. For instance, this Ubuntu Doc mentions some options that are worth checking out. I also mentioned a work-around a couple years ago. You can also grab pre-built VMware Applicances as well.

There are three “major new” features with this release of VMware Player and I checked out each.

That’s really not that bad, but I have two small issues with it:

1. Hovering over the ubuntu menu doesn’t always cause this guy to show up. Sometimes I have to go click a Windows window and then try again. In the picture above, you can see that I’ve “pinned” it to always show the menu.
2. I miss my tray!

Those aside, I’m sure I can adapt.

Installer bundle for Linux hosts — Installing VMware Player on Linux hosts just got a lot easier. The new bundle format provides a graphical UI wizard for most Linux operating systems. With a few mouse clicks, VMware Player is installed. For users who want a custom installation, a command-line interface provides complete control.

Works great, easiest VMware install on a Linux machine that I’ve ever done. By far.

Accelerated 3-D graphics on Windows XP guests — VMware Player 2.5 virtual machines now work with applications that use DirectX 9 accelerated graphics with shaders up through Shader Model 2.0 on Windows XP guests. Hosts can be running Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Linux.

Here we go — this is what got me all excited to give VMware Player a try. 3D graphics in a virtual machine? Awesome!

Unfortunately, I’ve not yet quite managed to get it to work with EverQuest so the jury is still out on this feature. DxDiag.exe shows things are there and the tests run OK though. I have more work to do before I throw in the towel though.

(Updated: I’m closer now  — key seems to be to run EQ in windowed mode… After each attempt be sure to run dxdiag and ensure it still sees a 3d device. If not, shut down the client and restart Player to get it back)

There are some other nice features of Player. Running the VM in a window and want to change resolution? Just stretch out the window to whatever size you want it. No longer do you need to diddle between 1024×768 and 1280×1024 (for example).  Infinite options! Another cool thing I noticed first in unity mode and then confirmed when running the VM in a window is that dragging and dropping files between the host and guest OS works really well. I like that feature too. Saves messing around with network shares.

(Updated: In the interest of fairness, I just noticed that VirtualBox supports the flexible resolution settings as well. I’d just never tried it before!)

Compared to VirtualBox, my stuff in VMware Player seems to run just a wee bit quicker. However, compared to VirtualBox, my VMware Player uses [much] more memory. And, of course, you can easily create new Vm clients with VirtualBox without resorting to any hacks or work-arounds…

Which is better? That’s for you to decide, both certainly have their strong points. I have more experimenting to do, but right now I’d lean towards VirtualBox for machines with “lesser” resources and VMware for the others. It definitely helps to have a VMware server setup to create new clients.

Different Comment:

1  Alisha says:

November 19, 2008 at 8:37 pm

I haven’t had problems with the little menu button appearing, but I do find it annoying sometimes. Unity in VMWare Player may behave slightly different than in Workstation.

It would be great if it would just show the main taskbar and then I could set it to auto-hide like in VirtualBox. But for the most part, I usually have most applications open that I need before I enable Unity mode.

If I could run the .NET application for work that I mentioned in my comment from your other post, I would probably switch from VMWare to VirtualBox in a second!

As you said, both of them have their strong points. For work I’ll stick with VMWare, and VirtualBox for testing things.

2. Chris says:

November 20, 2008 at 11:23 am

hey Alisha, thanks for the comments.

For me, I’d sure love it if we could even optionally chose to show the taskbar in windows clients… that would rock.

Virtual machines – introduction to VMWare Player

Have you ever heard about a virtual machine? It is simply software that emulates a computer, and this virtual computer can act exactly as a normal computer does. For example, I can install any operating system that normally can be installed on this kind of computer.

I downloaded a virtual computer from VMWare, maybe in the summer 2006, but never got to test it out until January 2007. I have to say I am amased!

While working on my PHP2XMI tool I needed to test the output on the famous Umbrello UML Modeller. This UML editor only runs on Linux, so I installed the virtual computer, called VMWare Player, but you need some operating system to work with it. So I downloaded the Linux variant Ubuntu 5.10 (they have an installation of this distribution called Browser Appliance, I will call this Ubunto from now on). I booted it up, and installed the UML editor. To communicate between the virtual computer (running Ubuntu) and my Windows operating system, I just share a folder in Windows, and access this folder through networking in Ubuntu. Maybe there are som better ways of sharing files, please tell me if you know a better solution.

To emulate a computer takes CPU power, and the operating systems I have tried, do run, ofcourse, more slowly than if you installed it directly to your hard drive. I do not think it is too slow to use for testing, but it depends what you are going to use it for. I would never run a 3d game or video editing for example, but that is also because I only have a 1GHz Pentium III processor.

Running Windows 2000 on the virtual computer
I have also tried installing Windows 2000 in the virtual computer. I told the virtual computer where the image of my Windows 2000 install CD was, and started it. It booted up from the CD and started the installation

Get started yourself
To get started you need to download the virtual computer (software), called VMWare Player. Then you need an operating system, look for one you like at VMWares collection, or download the Browser Appliance (Ubuntu Linux 5.10 with Firefox).

An article on how to install your own operating software will come here later.

Hope you like this article, and please leave me a comment if there should be any questions or corrections to the article.

Run Virtual Machines on Linux or Windows PCs for Free

Run virtual machines on your Windows or Linux PC with VMware Player 2.5. This free desktop virtualization software application makes it easy to operate any virtual machine created by VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, VMware Server or VMware ESX, as well as Microsoft Virtual Server virtual machines or Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machines. You can also use Player to evaluate one of the many virtual appliances available from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

• Run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC
• Experience the benefits of preconfigured products without any installation or configuration hassles
• Share data between host computer and virtual machine

Run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC

Get more out of your existing computer hardware. Use the free VMware Player application to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC.

With VMware Player, you can use any virtual machine created by VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, VMware Server or VMware ESX, as well as Microsoft Virtual Server virtual machines and Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machines. Import third party images including Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (formerly called Live State Recovery) images, Norton Ghost 10 images, Norton Save & Restore images, StorageCraft ShadowProtect images, and Acronis True Image images to VMware Player compatible virtual machines. Use 32- and 64-bit Windows, Linux, NetWare, or Solaris x86 operating systems side-by-side, without rebooting or partitioning your hard drive.

Evaluate virtual appliances with ease

VMware Player makes it simple to quickly evaluate one of the many virtual appliances available through the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace. A virtual appliance is a pre-built, pre-configured and ready-to-use enterprise software application on a virtual machine. With VMware Player, anyone can quickly and easily experience the benefits of preconfigured products without any installation or configuration hassles.

VMware launches ESX Lite

The so-called thin hypervisor, named ESX Server 3i, will be integrated in servers from Dell, IBM, and HP, according to VMware, with unnamed others to follow. The plan is that building virtualisation into the hardware simplifies deployment and management of virtual infrastructure, because it removes the installation step.

ESX Server 3i partitions a physical server into multiple secure and portable virtual machines, said VMware. The vendor claimed that users will have the hypervisor up and running “in a matter of minutes.” According to Tommy Armstrong, VMware’s European marketing manager, 3i allows a company use their preferred hardware OEM and, once booted, the server asks for the admin password and IP address, and is ready to run virtual machines.

VMware claimed that 3i was “the only hypervisor on the market today that does not incorporate a general-purpose operating system, thus freeing it from the many challenges involved in maintaining a general purpose OS.” 3i occupies only 32MB because VMware has removed the OS without affecting the functionality of the hypervisor. VMware reckoned it achieved this by removing the service console, which Armstrong reckoned reduced the footprint by 98 percent. Instead of managing the system locally, it can be accessed via VirtualCenter, VMware’s management tool for virtualised infrastructure.

As well as simplicity, VMware’s claimed that the benefits of this approach include reliability and security.

“Today, VMware is ushering in a new era where virtualisation is not separate from hardware, it is simply how industry-standard servers operate,” said marketing manager Raghu Raghuram. ”We have worked with our partners to integrate ESX Server directly into their hardware. Now customers can turn on their servers and boot directly into a fully-functioning hypervisor to rapidly and easily realise the benefits of virtualisation. We expect this advance to simplify virtualisation and make it accessible to customers of all sises.”

According to the company, users can deploy VMware’s Infrastructure 3 (VI3) products on top of 3i, including VirtualCenter, VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), High Availability (HA), and VMware Consolidated Backup.

Hardware vendors are expected to begin shipping ESX Server 3i within their products by the end of 2007 and over the course of 2008. IBM has already pre-announced such a device.

Virtual Desktop Manager 2

VMware’s updated Virtual Desktop Manager, VDM2, brings higher levels of control and manageability according to the company.

VDM2 is part of VMware’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which provides centralised desktop management and control using VI3 and is tightly integrated with Virtual Center. VDI delivers desktop images to users via virtual machines running on servers in the datacentre, rather than under the desk.

VDM2 connects remote clients to the right desktop, depending on roles and privileges and is designed to meet the security and scalability needs of small and large deployments, said VMware. The product is expected to be generally available later this year.

“The desktop is fundamentally changing,” said desktop division director Jerry Chen. “Our customers are transforming the way they manage their desktop infrastructure, replacing their traditional PCs with centralised desktops that can be more effectively managed and controlled. Users of virtual desktops can enjoy reliability, data protection and disaster recovery capabilities that traditionally have only been available for server applications. In addition, they get the flexibility of being able to access their desktops from many locations and devices.”

“IDC predicts that revenue for desktop virtualisation software will be nearly $2 billion by 2011, and we feel virtual machines for desktop computing is one of the most exciting developments within the technology industry in recent years,” said IDC’s John Humphreys. “We see that there is significant opportunity for organisations to improve the efficiency with which they provide computing resources to their users through the use of virtualised client computing technologies – and with a solution like VDI, organisations have an alternative that not only provides a familiar user experience, but also helps to centralise desktops and improve data security and user productivity.”

Site Recovery Manager

Site Recovery Manager is a new product that’s claimed to improve organisations’ ability to recover their datacentres when disasters and outages occur. SRM enables VI3 users to automate the setting up, testing, and execution of recovery plans, said VMware.

The new product eliminates dependencies between operating systems and hardware and simplifies protection and recovery of systems and data, according to VMware, which has been trailing its competitors in marketing virtualisation as a disaster recovery technology. SRM allows users to create, configure, and manage recovery plans from VirtualCenter, offers automated failover, and easier testing of recovery plans, said the company.

“VMware customers have demonstrated that disaster recovery is one of the killer applications driving adoption of VMware virtual infrastructure,” said Raghuram. “VMware Site Recovery Manager demonstrates our continuing focus on extending the compelling value of the VMware Infrastructure 3 platform for disaster recovery. Site Recovery Manager brings together the capabilities of VMware Infrastructure 3 and our partners’ leading replication technology with its pioneering disaster recovery automation and management capabilities in order to take risk, cost, and complexity out

Technical Track – Vmware Site Recovery Manager

The first session I’ve attended was about the new opportunity offered by Vmware to have a DR orchestrator. Jay Judkowitz, Product Line Manager for DR and Data Protection at Vmware, in what way this add-on facilitate the disaster recovery managers life, automatizing failover in case of disaster and giving the ability to test on a regular basis the DR procedure (with non disruptive testing).

All the process are based on proprietary storage replica command and is orchestrated by Virtual Infrastructure: so we have storage replica and VMware tied together.

Features of SRM are:

• Setup of the workflow (DR plan is stored within Virtual Center, in a virtual runbook)
• Cross sites VC management (VMs get correctly organized on the secondary site, VMs have right CPU and memory allocation after failover, VMs are plugged in the right (v)LAN after failover)
• DR plan change control (rolebased access control, audit trails, recovery and test plans can be exported, changes to DR plan are instantly reflected in the test and failover environments)
• Failover workflow (automate failover with playback of virtual runbook
• Network management (VMs’ IP changes automatically if needed, IP changes could be scripted to reflect the changes into DNS)
• Test workflow (run frequent non -disruptive testing, create a test network, export the results, increase the scope of DR plan, meet the compliance)

In order to use SRM you need to have two sites each with one VCM server. If you have more than two sites you’ll have to work with sites pair.

For now you must use VMFS file system (RDM is experimental). The replication can be done within supported Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage.

VMware ships Site Recovery Manager DR software

VMware Inc. will begin taking orders this week for its disaster recovery management software for virtual machines, called Site Recovery Manager, and start shipping the disaster recovery software in 30 days.

Since previewing the Site Recovery Manager last fall at VMWorld, VMware has been working with storage vendors to create software integration modules called storage replication adapters. These storage replication adapters allow VMware’s VirtualCenter management console to handle the failover and recovery of virtual machines via array-based replication.

The integration will also allow VMware’s VirtualCenter to execute commands against storage arrays at primary and secondary sites during recoveries and enable VirtualCenter-generated metadata about virtual machines to be replicated, along with system and application data.

More on disaster recovery Storage and virtualization and disaster recovery SunGard plans cloud-based disaster recovery for VMware DR planning in a virtualized environment Server virtualization may have big DR payoff

EMC, Dell/EqualLogic, LeftHand Networks, NetApp and FalconStor will support VMware Site Recovery Manager when it becomes generally available in June. Vendors that will be adding support for the product later include Hitachi Data Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and 3PARdata. SunGard recently announced support for Site Recovery Manager, and plans to add cloud-based secondary data center offerings for small shops.

VMware does not support host-based replication yet. “We have had customer inquiries about supporting server-based replication,” said Jon Bock, VMware senior manager of product marketing. “But we’re going to be thinking about the size of most host-based replication environments. With a large number of virtual machines, it might not really work.”

VMware’s target audience for Site Recovery Manager is organizations running large numbers of non-mission-critical virtual machines, Bock said. “This is for users with large amounts of virtual machines they want to protect as a group,” he said. “For critical servers, geoclustering and other high-availability partner products make more sense.”

Site Recovery Manager is a separate download, but users also need VMware’s VirtualCenter to provide an interface to the software. Software integration modules must be downloaded separately from storage vendors. Once installed on a server, organizations can enter policies and an order of operations for their disaster recovery plans. If there’s a site failure, administrators can log onto VirtualCenter and hit a button that says Run to have the recovery process carried out automatically.

Site Recovery Manager will require users to log on for disaster recovery plans to execute, Bock said. “If we’re talking about the failure of one mission-critical server, it does make sense for users not to want it to wait to failover, but we’re focused on cases of a whole-site failure where there may be specific processes for declaring a disaster and getting approval to proceed with recovery plans,” he said. Customers can also use Site Recovery Manager to create an isolated network and use snapshot data to do a “what if” workup of disaster recovery plans or to conduct a live test that doesn’t impact production systems.

Bock said VMware will next look at expanding the set-of-use cases for the product, including the possibilities of adding automation and features specifically for branch office failover to a central data center.

As VMware looks to expand beyond the hypervisor and broaden server virtualization’s appeal beyond the estimated 60% of the market that has it installed, there is speculation about VMware’s intentions when it comes to its storage partners. VMware could conceivably come out with its own host-based replication product and crush the storage players’ stake in that space.

But Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Mark Bowker said that’s unlikely. “So could Microsoft, couldn’t they?” he said. “Users were already basically doing this with scripts – and you still can. VMware has identified an opportunity and stepped in to develop a framework so customers don’t have to go through a long and tedious process.”

Still, there seems to be confusion among users as to which data protection features will fit where in their environments. “I’d like to find out more about how this plays with NetApp’s Data Protection Manager,” said Tom Becchetti, systems engineer for a medical manufacturing company. Becchetti said he’s been evaluating the NetApp software for similar replication and data protection automation.

Accelerate recovery and ensure successful recovery by automating the recovery process and eliminating the complexity of managing and testing recovery plans. VMware Site Recovery Manager makes disaster recovery rapid, reliable and manageable so that you can meet recovery objectives. By eliminating complex manual recovery steps and enabling non-disruptive testing of recovery plans, Site Recovery Manager removes the risk and worry from disaster recovery, helping you protect all of your important systems and applications.

Take the Disaster Out of Disaster Recovery

Easily manage and implement your recovery plan with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

Build, Manage and Execute Reliable
Disaster Recovery Plans

As an integrated element of VMware Infrastructure, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager helps you :

• Accelerate recovery for the virtual environment through automation
• Ensure reliable recovery by enabling non-disruptive testing
• Simplify recovery by eliminating complex manual recovery steps and centralizing management of recovery plans

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Accelerate Recovery

Ensure that you are able to meet your recovery time objectives (RTOs) by automating the recovery process.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager eliminates the slow manual steps of recovery, turning the complex paper runbooks associated with traditional disaster recovery into an integrated part of your virtual infrastructure management.

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Ensure Reliable Recovery

Eliminate common causes of failure during recovery and make it possible to test your recovery plans thoroughly and easily.

By automating recovery, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager eliminates error-prone manual steps in the recovery process and ensures that recovery procedures will be consistently executed as intended. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager also makes it easy to execute non-disruptive tests of recovery plans within an isolated testing environment so that you can ensure that they are up to date and will execute successfully.

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Simplify Disaster Recovery

Simplify and centralize the process of creating, updating and managing recovery plans.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager guides users through the process of building, managing and executing disaster recovery plans. It integrates seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure and VMware vCenter Server to make recovery plans significantly easier to manage and update.

It also integrates easily with storage replication software from leading storage vendors to simplify the use of advanced replication software with VMware Infrastructure.

VMware Site Recovery Manager simplifies disaster recovery

TAGS: Virtualization Apps/Tools

VMware has announced its new tool for disaster recovery management and automation of a virtual infrastructure. VMware Site Recovery Manager, part of VMware’s suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, leverages virtualization to simplify business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with executing disaster recovery.

While traditional disaster recovery plans are laborious and time-consuming to set up and maintain, VMware SRM combined with virtualization technology makes the entire implementation of a recovery site a much more inexpensive and simplified process. Traditional non-virtualized systems have extensive dependencies on hardware configurations, which make consistent automation of the process extremely difficult if not impossible. Virtualization removes that dependency. And virtualization and SRM also allow the IT department to actually test the disaster recovery plan without downtime, something else that was previously determined impossible.

“Effective disaster recovery has been a significant challenge for many organizations,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware. “With the delivery of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware removes hurdles associated with disaster recovery planning and implementation. Through our innovative disaster recovery testing, management, and automation capabilities, we bring predictability back into the hands of IT and help eliminate risks associated with human error.”
Site Recovery Manager works seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure, VMware VirtualCenter, and replication software from storage partners to provide integrated disaster recovery management and automation. It provides:

• Integrated management of disaster recovery plans. Create, update and document recovery plans directly from VMware VirtualCenter.
• Non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans. Execute automated tests of recovery plans in an isolated testing environment using the recovery plan that would be used in an actual failover. Hardware configuration dependencies are eliminated and testing can occur without impacting production systems.
• Automated failover and recovery. Automate execution of the recovery process, eliminating many of the slow and unreliable manual processes common in traditional disaster recovery.

With the release of the product, VMware’s parent company, EMC, is one of the first vendors to officially announce support for Site Recovery Manager. Other vendors showing support for the product include 3Par, Dell, FalconStor Software, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, LeftHand Networks, and NetApp.

Site Recovery Manager is priced much like VMware Infrastructure: Based on the number of processors in the servers. SRM can be purchased as a standalone product or purchased as part of VMware’s Management and Automation Bundle which includes two-processor versions of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Lifecycle Manager, and VMware Lab Manager or VMware Stage Manager.

Resize a Virtual Disk with VMware Converter

Update: Please, also check out my first impressions about VMware Converter 3.0 final.
Some weeks ago, I published an article where I explained how to expand a virtual VMware disk. The whole procedure is quite complicated and time consuming. However, with VMware Converter 3, it is now much easier to enlarge a virtual disk.

The main purpose of VMware Converter is to convert physical machines to virtual machines. Moreover, you can use it to expand virtual disks. I tried this feature today with a VMware Workstation virtual machine and was quite satisfied with the result.

My virtual test server was a Windows Server 2003 SP1 machine with two virtual disks, both with 4 GB of disk space. I selected “standalone virtual machine” as the source and destination system in the VMware Converter wizard. To expand the size of the virtual disks, I chose “Select volumes and resize to save or add space.” This allowed me to change the size of each volume separately. I set the disk space of both volumes to 50 GB.

The whole conversion process took about 75 minutes, which is quite long considering that VMware Converter was running on a relatively new server. The source and destination machines were both on the same physical server.

The new virtual machine booted up without problems. As expected, both volumes were enlarged. However, I had a problem with the VMware tools. They were still installed, but the mouse pointer was quite jerky, which happens if you access a virtual machine remotely without VMware tools installed. I reinstalled them and everything worked fine afterward.

I then tried to convert a running virtual machine, but VMware Converter informed me that I had to shut down this machine first. It seems that VMware Converter doesn’t support hot cloning of virtual machines. Therefore, I am not sure if you can use the Starter Edition to expand virtual disks since only the Enterprise Edition supports cold cloning.

You can at least use the beta for this purpose. So, if your have some virtual machines where you want to resize the disks, I suggest you do this now.

Different Comment:

1. Using VMware Converter…

Craig Pringle walks us through some steps of using VMware Converter, now in beta, wih very nice screen shots. Craig Pringle – Converting a Physical Machine to a Virtual Machine. After that I installed VMWare Converter onto a Windows 2003…

Convert Physical Machines to Virtual Machines – Free!
Use the intuitive wizard-driven interface of VMware Converter to convert your physical machines to virtual machines. VMware Converter quickly converts Microsoft Windows based physical machines and third party image formats to VMware virtual machines. It also converts virtual machines between VMware platforms. Automate and simplify physical to virtual machine conversions as well as conversions between virtual machine formats with VMware Converter.
Convert Microsoft Windows based physical machines and third party image formats to VMware virtual machines
Complete multiple conversions simultaneously with a centralized management

Convert Physical Machines to Virtual Machines in Minutes
VMware Converter can be run on a wide variety of hardware and supports most commonly used versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems. With this robust, enterprise class migration tool you can:

Quickly and reliably convert local and remote physical machines into virtual machines without any disruption or downtime.

Complete multiple conversions simultaneously with a centralized management console and an intuitive conversion wizard.

Convert other virtual machine formats such as Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server or backup images of physical machines such as Symantec Backup Exec LiveState Recovery or Ghost 9 to VMware virtual machines.

Restore VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) images of virtual machines to running virtual machines.

Clone and backup physical machines to virtual machines as part of your disaster recovery plan.