Quoting from official announcement:
PlateSpin today announced the general availability of PowerP2V 4.0, the worlds leading fully automated physical-to-virtual migration solution. With well over 150 customers in its first 6 months of availability, the release of PowerP2V 4.0 is a major step forward in providing the worlds first fully automated Operating System Portability platform, which allows operating systems and their associated applications and data to be moved between physical and virtual machines with zero manual effort for VMware ESX Server, VMware GSX Server, and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.
PlateSpin PowerP2V 4.0 now adds flexible and reusable image support for physical-to-virtual machine (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual machine (V2V) migrations for Windows and Linux based servers. In addition to providing direct source-to-target conversions, users can now stage the conversion process by remotely capturing an image of a source physical server or virtual machine and storing it in PlateSpin’s flexible image format on any file medium. Unlike other image-based solutions on the market which require images to be deployed on identically configured systems, PowerP2Vs flexible image format allows a single image to be repeatedly deployed on different virtual infrastructures that have different hardware and software configurations. PlateSpins image format is usable for P2V, V2V, and will be usable for V2P migrations in a future release. This will allow data centers to redeploy and reuse a single image to any virtual or physical infrastructure.
PowerP2V 4.0 also provides a new lights-out feature that automatically issues email alerts should any conversion job fail. This fully configurable feature provides the user with the option of passively monitoring the progress of jobs in addition to actively monitoring jobs through the use of PowerP2Vs real-time job monitor. Through email alerting, users can perform multiple conversion jobs and be notified any time a significant event occurs throughout the conversion process.
Other enhancements of PlateSpin PowerP2V 4.0 include:
– Support for conversions to VMware ESX Server 2.5
– Support for ESX port groups
– Transfer of files with restricted permissions
– Extended NTFS support, such as compressed and sparse files
– Additional support for Windows dynamic disks
– Support for French language OS Support for Red Hat Linux 8
PlateSpin PowerP2V 4.0 with image support is most useful for solving the following data center challenges:
– Server Consolidation for Geographically Separated Data Centers
Many server consolidation initiatives involve source and target servers that reside in different geographical locations, and have little or no network bandwidth between them. With PowerP2V 4.0, data center users have the option of staging the conversion by first capturing the source server into a PlateSpin image format, and then deploying it to a virtual host server in the central data center. PlateSpins new image format support also allows users to maximize uptime by staggering the capture and deploy processes, which allows users to accommodate different availability and uptime requirements for source and target machines. The ability to provide staged conversions based on PlateSpins image format also allows users to repeatedly perform conversions from an image library as an alternative to performing a direct source server data transfer providing a new form of flexible provisioning. Like PlateSpins direct peer-to-peer data transfer method, the image capture and deploy process does not require any physical contact with the source or target machines. Users simply connect to the network where the source system resides, captures the image onto their machine (even a laptop), connects to the network where the target system resides, and deploys the image to the target host.
– Disaster Recovery using Virtual Machines
Many data centers are using virtual machines as warm-backups as an alternative to or in concert with tape backup, for disaster recovery using PowerP2Vs existing automated peer-to-peer conversion. With PowerP2V 4.0, users now have the option of performing backups of virtual machines to a PlateSpin image format, in addition to replicating a server to another virtual machine directly. Should the primary virtual machine fail, users can easily restore the virtual machine to a previous working state from either a PlateSpin flexible image file or the recovery virtual machine instance.
Load Matching between Virtual Host Servers PowerP2V 4.0 allows users to move virtual machines between heterogeneous virtual host servers such as VMware ESX Server, VMware GSX Server, and Microsoft Virtual Server in order to balance loads. Especially useful for non-SAN based virtual host environments, PowerP2V can migrate a virtual machine from an over-utilized host server to an under-utilized host server by simply dragging and dropping a VM from a source host to a secondary virtual host. This effectively allows the user to quickly and easily match VMs with the most suitable virtual hosts to maximize application performance and balance workload.
– Rapid Replication of Production Servers for Application Testing
Using PowerP2V 4.0 with flexible image support, users can capture an entire production server and replicate it to a virtual machine environment in the test lab even if there is insufficient network bandwidth or network connectivity between the production environment and test labs. Users can simply capture a production server to PlateSpins image file format, and automatically and repeatedly deploy it in the virtual host in the separate test lab environment.
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– Pricing and Availability
PlateSpin PowerP2V 4.0 is available to the public today and can be purchased for US$3,000 for a 25 conversion license. Unlimited annual and perpetual licenses are also available upon request.