InVirtus VM Optimizer
Posted by sharpstyle on March 18, 2007
We take advantage of Microsoft Virtual PC/Server for many different tasks and are always on the look out for tips on how to make our VMs faster/smaller.
Reading Scott Hanselman’s post on Virtual PC Tips, found the following useful utility: InVirtus VM Optimizer.
From their websites: “VM Optimizer automatically reduces your Microsoft® Windows® based virtual machines to their smallest possible size and enhances the performance of your Microsoft Windows-based virtual machines.” (http://www.invirtus.com/content/view/16/387/)
If you take a look at Scott’s post, there are a number of links to pretty impressive results achieved by VP Optimizer. Here is my experience:
- I have full development environment within a VM (VS 2005 SP1, MSDN, SQL Server, Office, etc)
- Having full development environment within VM serves a few purposes:
- It allows me to switch host machines every 3-6 months without loosing days being unproductive while rebuilding
- It allows me to backup full setup without all the extra data (Outlook, etc)
- My image was 21.4 GB with about 1GB of free space reported by Windows Explorer
- After VM Optimizer it is now 13.9 GB
- I am happy and my hard drive is happy
- It also makes backups much faster
A few notes:
- InVirtus offers 2 versions: “Personal/Small Office Edition — $69″ and “Corporate/Enterprise — $129″ (http://www.invirtus.com/content/view/762/410/)
- You need to purchase “Corporate” if you use it for “business” — not sure how many people use VMs for “fun”
- Corporate version provides “automated” version, which is not available in Personal
- InVirtus website doesn’t do a good job explaining the difference between Manual and Automated
- Manual asks you a number of questions during the process
- Automated does everything, well, “automated”
- Even if I was using VMs for fun, I would still spend $129 Vs $69 for the automated version
Here are a few good links providing overview of the tool and different options:
Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen – Invirtus Virtual Machine Optimizer
InVirtus VM Optimizer 2.0 Final Review
~Mike
