Welcome the to VMware Converter 3.0 Beta Program!

Here's some old news that I've just came uppon:

VMware has unveiled VMware Converter 3.0 starter edition for public download. if you thinking create virtual machines on your current computer. Try VMware converter 3.0. An application is highly robust and scalable enterprise-class migration tool that reduces time converting physical machines to VMware virtual machines. The converter itself using snapshot based cloning mechanism which is extremely fast and reliable. Furthermore, VMware Converter enables remote conversions without disrupting the source server during the conversion process.

Beside that, VMware Converter have other features like converting virtual machines to a newer version of VMware and converting images from other software like Microsoft Virtual PC.

In related news, you can check out LiveCD Player Virtual Machine from vmwarez.com, which lets you create a virtual machine for VMware from any LiveCD ISO with just one click.

VMware Converter 3.0 starter edition highlight:
Single, central management console to easily deploy, manage and schedule conversions without the need for a Helper VM.

New local hot cloning functionality provides live migrations with zero
server downtime for the source machine.

Broad hardware support for physical machines as compared to the previous generation P2V Assistant product.

Supports cloning a wide variety of Windows OS platforms including Windows
XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4 (SP4 +) and 64-bit Windows Support (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003).

Supports conversion of standalone VMware virtual machine disk formats (VMware Player, VMware Workstation, VMware GSX Server and VMware Server) across all VMware virtual machine platforms (including ESX 3.0 server and VC 2.0 managed servers as target host).

Supports conversion of 3rd party disk image formats such as Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (formerly LiveState Recovery) and Norton Ghost9 (or higher) to VMware virtual machine disk format.

Faster conversion speeds by means of sector-based snapshot cloning.
Remote hot cloning functionality for deployment to hosted
(VMware Player, VMware Workstation, VMware Server) environments.
More information on Resize a Virtual Disk with VMware Converter

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