No matter what role your virtual machine plays, whether testing, development, disaster recovery, training, or IT production, a smaller and optimized virtual machine is definitely warranted. Invirtus produces a commercial software application that fits the bill. Its claim to fame is a product called VM Optimizer which attempts to reduce virtual machines to their smallest size possible and at the same time enhance No matter what role your virtual machine plays, whether testing, development, disaster recovery, training, or IT production, a smaller and optimized virtual machine is definitely warranted. Invirtus produces a commercial software application that fits the bill. Its claim to fame is a product called VM Optimizer which attempts to reduce virtual machines to their smallest size possible and at the same time enhance its performance. The company’s latest version has just been released, VM Optimizer 2.5. And with it, the company has made some improvements to the product offering: Settings Manager – Settings Manager is an innovative supplemental application for Corporate Edition owners that allows you to create an XML based configuration file that VM Optimizer uses at run-time. FreeSpace – An included application that integrates into the optimization process and goes sector by sector on the virtual hard disk thoroughly zeroing out unused space to ensure that optimization results are as good as possible. NullBoot – To end the hassle of forced reboots during the optimization process, the company has created this proprietary technology for implementing live core OS configurations without requiring a reboot. It is available in the Corporate Edition. VMShrink – This additional tool was written to integrate with VMware’s product and carry out the VMDK shrinking with zero intervention. Users no longer have to perform the additional steps of mounting the VMDK file and then use command line switches. You can try VM Optimizer by going to the following Web site. Software Development