Vizioncore updates its P2V conversion tool

During VMworld 2008, Vizioncore showed off a preview of its advanced conversion tool, vConverter. And this week, less than two months after the show, Vizioncore is announcing the release of vConverter 4.0, the company’s latest entry in the virtualization application space.

vConverter is focused on the physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion market. It automates and accelerates conversions to Microsoft, Virtual Iron, VMware, and XenServer environments. Much of the technology has come from the Invirtus acquisition made last year. In 2006, Invirtus worked on a product called VM Converter which would ultimately lead to Vizioncore’s vConverter 4.0.

The latest release introduces a number of new features. And much like PlateSpin’s P2V product, this conversion tool has grown and evolved from simple image migration and P2V projects to a more modern and much needed disaster recovery effort.

“The benefits of virtualization are now widely accepted, but end-users are not fully informed how they go about moving to a virtual infrastructure,” said Chris Akerberg, president and chief operating officer of Vizioncore. “By giving users a simple and non-disruptive way of bringing their physical servers into the virtual realm, vConverter 4.0 eases the path to virtualization for organizations that may have previously been concerned about the potential risk or disruption caused by such a transition. This latest version of vConverter sets new standards in levels of speed, automation, and reliability of conversion, providing a wealth of new features that make it suitable for all sorts of conversion projects -– from one-off conversions and P2V jobs for disaster recovery, right through to enterprise-scale migration initiatives.”

Version 4.0 adds a continuous protection feature, enabling companies to maintain a virtual backup copy of a physical machine for disaster recovery purposes. New incremental replication technology allows physical servers to be continuously protected by updating the replicas with only changes to blocks within a file from the source machine.

Another new feature is called Synchronized Cutover, which reduces the downtime required during workload migration by allowing the source and virtual machine clone to operate at the same time until the final sync event takes place.

Other new features include a one-click quick conversion process called Quick Convert and an offline boot mode that guarantees data consistency called Remote Cold Cloning.

vConverter 4.0 is available in two editions. A one-time conversion edition for server consolidation ($129) and a recurring conversion edition for disaster recovery ($299).

You can download a trial version of vConverter here.