In an ideal world, the decision to migrate existing physical servers to virtual machines would be followed by simply pushing the "migrate" button. In the real world, physical to virtual (P2V) migration can be fraught with difficulty. Leading virtualization vendor VMware has significantly improved its P2V tool. Best of all, the new tool is free.

Introducing VMware Converter

VMware released a free downloadable beta version of its new VMware Converter in October 2006. VMware expects a full version to be ready for general release in the second quarter of 2007. The Enterprise Edition of the program will also be free though it will be bundled as part of Virtual Management Center in VMware's flagship Virtual Infrastructure 3.

VMware Converter is the successor to two virtual machine (VM) migration programs: VMware P2V Assistant and VMware VM Importer. P2V Assistant is used to automate the migration of physical servers to virtual machines. VM Importer is used to convert VMs created with other programs to run on the latest version of ESX Server...