Announced for the first time at VMworld 2007, launched in beta in January, and expected for Q2 2008, the newest automation from VMware, Stage Manager (VSM), entered in the beta 2 phase last week.

The new build (1471) introduces several new capabilities and enhancements like:

• Change history View an annotated history of actions on a configuration.
• Guest customization This feature replaces the VM Personalizer utility.
• Service template Stage Manager administrators can set up and change a default service template, used for creation of new services
• Partial deployment of configurations Deploy portions of a configuration rather than the whole configuration.
• Demote configuration Demote a configuration to any prior stage.

Enroll for the beta program here.