VMware Inc announced new features of VMware Go, a Web-based service that provides small and medium businesses (SMBs) with an easy on-ramp to virtualizing their applications by automating the installation and configuration of the industry-leading hypervisor, VMware ESXi. With VMware Go, SMBs can not only easily virtualize servers and create new virtual machines, but customers that have created virtual machines on VMware Server can now move to the more scalable VMware ESXi platform without losing the investment they’ve made in creating and fine tuning virtual machines.

VMware Go was developed in partnership with Shavlik Technologies, an IT management software vendor and a member of VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner Program.

Another new feature of VMware Go is Collective Intelligence, which helps guide a customer’s virtualization experience by aggregating user data to show virtualization best practices. With Collective Intelligence, users can view what other users have done in each stage of the virtualization process so they can be more confident they are making the right virtualization decisions.

Additionally, users can view reports and dashboards with such information as the average number of virtual machines users are creating per VMware ESXi host, the top five hardware types on which the community is running VMware ESXi, or the top five virtual appliances that have been downloaded from VMware Go.

“With the new features of VMware Go, we’re providing the easiest on-ramp to virtualization for SMBs – at no additional cost,” said Manoj yadevan, director of emerging business and products, VMware. “Along with the ability to seamlessly migrate virtual machines from VMware Server to VMware ESXi, the new Collective Intelligence guide for VMware Go makes it easier than ever to quickly realize the full benefits of VMware ESXi and enable SMBs to maximize limited IT resources in just hours or days.”

Trevor Hart, vice president of marketing at Limos.com, was able to save thousands of dollars by creating virtual machines on VMware ESXi without the help of an IT expert. “Limos.com is a small startup with limited staff. We chose to virtualize because we needed to run a number of server OSese, preferring to segment each business function into its own server,” said Hart.
“VMware Go got us up and running in days rather than weeks. We chose virtualization over separate physical machines to save both money and time spent, not to mention minimizing any compatibility issues.”

“Our company had a unique scenario in which all of our infrastructure was based in the cloud and the mission was to set up a fully virtualized IT environment with just one physical server,” said Daniel de Sybel, director of technology and operations, Infectious Media. “With VMware Go, we were able to rapidly deploy virtual machines on the physical server, increasing our IT capabilities while keeping capital expenditures very low. Our next step is to deploy another physical server to ensure high availability and optimal disaster recovery in the event of an application or server failure.”