Have you ever noticed how quickly your virtual machines become bloated? You know, after a few days of installing and uninstalling applications, adding and removing files, surfing the Internet, yada yada yada - you turn around and your virtual machine file went from 4GB to 7GB, but you didn't really use up 3GB of space! If this happens on one virtual machine that might be acceptable, but what happens if you have ten virtual machines on the same host... or more? You can see where a simple problem like virtual machine disk bloat can really start to get out of hand.

Parallels, the company that recently brought Parallels Desktop for Mac to market, has announced the release of Parallels Compressor. This virtualization application is an easy-to-use management tool that helps reduce the size of virtual hard disks, sometimes by 50 percent or more.

One of the nice things about this tool is its nondiscriminatory, universal approach at virtual hard disk "weight loss". Compressor will work-out and slim down a virtual machine created with Parallels, as well as VMware or Microsoft virtualization products. Doing so reclaims that "stolen" disk space to free up disk storage, speeds up virtual machine disk copy time, and optimizes the now fit and trim virtual machine.

The product is sold in two flavors, Workstation and Server. Compressor Workstation, which retails for $49, is optimized for virtual workstations running Windows 2000 or XP. Compressor Server, available for $179, is a professional-grade tool that is optimized for virtual server or virtual workstations running Windows 2000, XP, 2000 Server or Server 2003.

And if you already own Parallels Desktop for Mac, take note, the final version of Desktop (build 1848) already has Parallels Compressor Server technology built-in.

To try or buy either version of Compressor, check out their Web site, here. The Web site also offers more information and documentation on the product.

Posted by David Marshall on June 29, 2006 04:37 PM