VMware's vSphere 4.0 virtualization platform is out and available, but the company is still playing catch-up with vSphere support for its other portfolio products. When VMware announced the launch and release of VMware vSphere 4, much of the virtualization world came to a standstill to watch and listen. Certainly an enormous success, the launch had people talking about it for weeks as we drooled over the new feature set and capabilities. But one of the details that may have been lost in all of the hoopla was that the entire VMware portfolio of applications and tools wasn’t ready to migrate over from VI3.x support to vSphere 4.0 out of the gate. Instead, for some, we’d have to wait.VMware Converter was the first application to make its way over into the VMware vSphere camp. With the update to Version 4.0.1 (build 161434), this conversion tool was made ready for some major vSphere action.[ Also in InfoWorld’s Virtualization Report: StarWind provides free V2V conversion tool and a free iSCSI SAN software | Vizioncore offers 10 tips for P2V migrations ] If you aren’t familiar with VMware vCenter Converter, it provides users with an easy way to automate the creation of VMware virtual machines. If you’ve heard about Physical-to-Virtual (P2V), Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V), or Image-to-Virtual (I2V), you’re almost there. Converter creates VMware VMs from physical machines (which run Windows or Linux), other virtual machine formats (from competing virtualization products), and third-party image formats (like from Acronis or Symantec). Through its centralized management console, Converter Standalone can convert multiple local and remote physical machines without any disruptions or downtime.P2V has come a long way since the early days, and products like VMware Converter have removed much of the hidden magic and art to getting a machine converted over to a virtual machine.By adding support for VMware vSphere 4.0 as a source and destination target, the updated version of Converter has also added the following supported features: Support for configuring target disks as thin provisioned disksSupport creation of IDE disks on vSphere 4.0Support for backup products to restore vSphere 4.0 virtual machines backed up using VCBSupport for creation of virtual hardware Version 7.0 virtual machines on vSphere 4.0. targets as well as migration of hardware Version 7.0 virtual machines from Workstation and Server platforms to vSphere 4.0Support for importing OVF 1.0 single virtual machine imagesSupport for customization of Windows Server 2008 guestsAnd perhaps best of all, the product is still free. Go download your copy of VMware vCenter Converter now. Technology Industry