During the VMworld 2006 VMware finally unveiled how further the work made by Akimbi has gone, releasing the first Lab Manager 2.4 public beta.
The full list of features of the product is available here.
This build (2.4.0.153) offers in particular:
- Import Template from VMFS
You can import a template and its virtual machine files from VMFS (ESX Server) storage. Lab Manager already allows you to import templates from SMB storage - Export Template
You can export a template and its virtual machine files to a directory on the network. - Export Configuration
You can export a configuration and its virtual machine files to a directory on the network - Consolidate Template
After creating multiple clones, you can consolidate the delta disks that may affect performance into one disk - Move Storage
Administrators can move the contents of a SAN (VMFS) storage server to another server - Delete Storage
Administrators can delete SAN (VMFS) storage servers from Lab Manager. This operation does not delete the files on the storage servers - Use NFS media storage
You can add NFS media storage and synchronize the contents of that media storage with the Lab Manager media library
You can download the beta here.
VMware expect to release RTM for December 15th.
As already mentioned at time of private beta, VMware decided to remove support for hosted solutions in this release. So SMB and Enterprise customers adopting VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server (both supported by the old Akimbi Slingshot) will be out of luck.
James Phillips, formerly Akimbi Founder and CEO and now Senior Director of Virtual Software Lifecycle at VMware, granted these customers will receive a notable incentive to move to ESX Server. But given the overall price of software and required hardware, training, and maintainance it’s more probable they will look for other solutions offered by Surgient and new startup VMLogix.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.