Vizioncore releases the latest virtualization conversion tool

Vizioncore has announced the release of vConverter 3.0, a virtualization conversion tool that the company claims as the “fastest, easiest and most reliable tool” for performing physical to virtual (P2V) and virtual to virtual (V2V) machine conversions. The company can also claim wide platform support as it works with many of the leading server virtualization platform vendors: VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and Virtual Iron.

According to the company, based on enterprise-class disk and networking technologies, vConverter allows system administrators to perform either single, multiple or scheduled ‘lights out’ machine conversions, providing an optimal way of designing and planning conversions to best fit infrastructure management needs.

To find out more information about Vizioncore’s latest product and the market space that it is entering, I was able to catch up with Scott Polly, Senior Director of Product Management at Vizioncore, and get some really valuable answers.

Q: What makes Vizioncore’s vConverter “the fastest and easiest” P2V tool?

A: First, if you haven’t tried it for yourself, please go to https://www.vizioncore.com/download.html and download a copy. It comes with three free bundled conversions. To comprehensively answer your question, vConverter originally shipped in late 2006, which was prior to VMware shipping its Converter 1.0. Vizioncore’s vConverter 3.0 is a mature product with a code base that has converted an estimated 250,000 servers. From then to now we have worked diligently with nearly ten thousand users and have learned a significant amount about what medium and large enterprise customers need when they virtualize their physical infrastructure.

Acquisition/Price is the least of the concerns among this constituency. In fact, did you know that the upfront price of software is less than 10% of the overall cost of software in IT? The cost to maintain that software in people, infrastructure, etc. makes up the lion share of the total cost of ownership picture. As a result, the cost of resources, downtime, errors, failures, infrastructure install requirements, time in overall conversion (including pre- and post-migrations tasks) etc., all add up to a very serious amount of time and money. Moreover, as one of the industry’s first software companies, today with more than 7,500 paying customers, we have the unique ability to research features and areas of concern, then approach real customers to verify that what we are building is what people want. vConverter v3 is what customers want for many reasons.

Speed:

We have developed patentable technologies which result in advanced intelligence and efficient handling of the bits and bytes required for virtualizing a customer’s physical infrastructure. Another exclusive Vizioncore technology in vConverter 3.0 is vzBoost. vConverter incorporates vzBoost which is a kernel level driver that speeds up all writes to the VMFS to reduce bottlenecks and this results in increased speed to VMware ESX Server.

Ease of use:

We have always maintained a reputation for being the easiest to use and have many testimonials to this effect. Offering multiple interface options (wizards, single, multiple simultaneous and/or scheduled conversions, drag’n’drop, CLI, et al), as well as the automation of numerous pre/post conversion tasks, enables any level of user to maximize his or her time and effectiveness with the tool.

Q: Wasn’t Invirtus working on a P2V solution prior to the acquisition? And is this the result of the work done by Invirtus? If so, was there anything new in the product that Vizioncore introduced?

A: Quest Software, Inc (NASDAQ: QSFT), acquired Invirtus in early 2007 (Vizioncore is also a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest). The core Invirtus asset, consisting of its executives and world class development organization, integrated with the Vizioncore organization shortly thereafter. Our goal was to leverage the collective software assets and develop the best “Direct to ESX” conversion experience on the market. It is no secret that Vizioncore is one of the most successful virtualization ISVs today, with more than 7,500 customers and 1,100 Channel Partners around the world. It is also no secret that Vizioncore cut its teeth in the VMware ESX Server market space. As we see this market broadening out to incorporate more “virtual infrastructure” platform choices, we are able to leverage our development expertise and knowledge to rapidly introduce more and more relevant software solutions for our customers.

Q: Can you elaborate more on vzBoost? Is this component found in other Vizioncore products? Is this part of what makes this product “fast”?

A: vzBoost is a VMware kernel level driver that Vizioncore uses within our backup and replication product lines. Our newest product vConverter v3.0 product for P2V will also incorporate this technology to ensure P2V’s don’t have any VMFS write bottle necks. This driver was created to speed up any type of writes to the VMFS that occur via the service console. This driver was created using our source code access to ESX Server.

Q: What types of guest operating systems does vConverter work with? Is it only Windows based guest OSes?

A: Currently vConverter 3.0 works with versions of Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, all versions of Small Business Server and XP Professional. Windows versions, including the new bootloader found in Vista and Windows Server 2008 and Linux are coming out soon.

Q: Is Linux support planned? I’ve seen many P2V solutions come out that work with Windows, but not many that can address Linux. Is this market driven? Or is it just difficult to migrate a Linux machine?

A: There is a market for Linux P2V. We have multiple exciting Linux technology solutions currently in development.

Q: Do you find that more people are interested in image migration for server consolidation purposes or disaster recovery? Is this changing? With more people moving away from simple server consolidation use cases, will it shift more to a DR primary need?

A: There is still strong demand for server consolidation. Currently, less than 10% of physical infrastructure is virtualized. Meaning there is some 90% of physical infrastructure left to be virtualized. As further proof of this, the number of target platforms for virtual infrastructure (ESX Server, XenServer, Virtual Iron) is increasing, not decreasing. We believe the trend for virtualization, be it used for server consolidation, disaster recovery, continuous data protection, business continuity, etc., is more like a greenfield opportunity for Vizioncore.

Q: Can you talk more about what interested Vizioncore to get into the P2V market at this stage of the game? With other companies like PlateSpin having been doing this for so long, what does Vizioncore bring to the table that’s new and interesting to separate it from the other players?

A: Our main focus is, as always, to provide additional value to our customers. In spite of the appearance of a clear leader in P2V, our customers and partners painted a much different picture. Not only was the P2V conversion race wide open, but there was a clear need for a viable solution in the P2V-DR space as well. Vizioncore has always played a prominent role in helping customers move to a virtualized environment. While our role historically has been one of removing obstacles and providing additional value, the time was right to take a more active approach and help drive implementations right from the start and help customers incorporate virtualization into their environments. With vConverter 3.0, we’ve been able to leverage the same disciplined approach to create not only a great solution for P2V Disaster Recovery, but also the fastest and most reliable conversion tool on the market today.

Q: Does vConverter directly tie into other Vizioncore products?

A: Yes as mentioned above, there is a vRanger Pro P2V-DR Module available that is essentially the vConverter engine running behind the vRanger UI. If the end user has already virtualized and currently uses vRanger Pro for backup and restore, the addition of the P2V-DR module lets them extend a virtualized backup and restore capability to their physical machines.

Q: Any feedback from customers as to whether they are more interested in going from physical to virtual or virtual to virtual?

A: Vizioncore has many channel partners actively offering physical to virtual integration services that include the use of vConverter. Virtual to virtual is important but nowhere near as popular a requirement as P2V. As more virtual platforms mature and as more organizations virtualize, we expect V2V conversions to increase.

Q: Does vConverter also offer virtual to physical (V2P) conversions? And how important is that ability with your users? Any plans to offer it?

A: We have V2P on the roadmap for a mid-year release. It is a check box item that we will be supporting shortly. The best advice here is to make sure your virtual infrastructure is well thought out/designed. The question as to the relevance of V2P is something that is being answered by the collective offerings of our multi-billion dollar industry. Is VMware doing all it can to ensure its platform performs like a native bare metal server? Is Citrix/Xen? How about Intel and AMD? Are Dell, HP, IBM, et al doing all they can to ensure that virtualization is able to scale to the performance needs of customer requirements? How about transactional database vendors like Oracle? Is Oracle, or Sun for that matter, trying to do all they can to ensure that virtualized database software is highly reliable and performance minded? The answer is a resounding “Yes”. Why does this matter? Specifically, right now V2P is more a line item in a feature list than it is a representation of a response to actual customer requirements.

I’d like to once again thank Vizioncore’s Scott Polly for taking the time to speak with me about the company’s latest offering – vConverter 3.0.