Vizioncore vConverter More Flexible, Adds Support for Hyper-V

Vizioncore Inc. has announced a new version of its vConverter image management software that converts a virtual machine image back into a physical system, giving users more flexibility. The update makes the virtualization data protection product more suitable for ongoing backup and restore functions as well as for disaster recovery. vConverter 5.0 works with Microsoft's Hyper-V systems as well as with VMware systems. Support for the Citrix Systems Inc. XenServer hypervisor may come in the future. The software can also convert virtual machines between VMware and Hyper-V systems and operates in an environment with a mix of hypervisors.

Image management software is a better design for protecting virtual systems than standard backups are because backups require agents, which are more expensive, have more I/O impact and more impact on CPU. Instead, image management software creates a virtual machine disk image. In previous versions of vConverter, the backed-up image could only be restored  to a hypervisor rather than a physical system which limited disaster recovery image restores to virtualized instances.

vConverter 5.0 now performs virtual-to-physical, virtual-to-virtual and physical-to-virtual server conversions. This will reduce downtime when upgrading physical servers by converting the physical system into a virtual machine, upgrading the server, testing it and then pushing the virtual machine back out to the physical system.

The update makes conversion/migration more than a one-time use utility as customers are moving from physical to virtual environments, says George Crump, owner of Storage Switzerland, and a Network Computing Contributor. "With this upgrade, vConverter becomes a tool that can greatly increase customer flexibility in responding to the needs of the business by providing the capability to move data from physical to virtual, and back to physical, or to a different virtual environment," he says. "It has an important role to play, not only in a disaster recovery situation, but also in a capacity-planning situation."

vConverter 5.0, which is part of Vizioncore's data protection suite, along with vRanger and vReplicator,  is available now for $299 per physical system. It can also be downloaded from the company's website for a free 90-day trial.