Some months ago I reviewed the final version of InVirtus VM Optimizer 2.0. For that review I used the "traditional" version of VM Optimizer, where the user has to interact with various steps of the wizard. That version also requires a reboot during the preparation of the virtual disk.
In this article I'm reviewing the "automated" version that doesn't require a reboot during the process (a reboot is required in both versions, but only at the end, to compact the virtual disks from the host OS).
VM Optimizer 2.0 is a software from InVirtus , that can optimize Microsoft (Virtual PC and Virtual Server) and VMware (Workstation and GSX Server) virtual machines, with Windows guest OS (from Win2K to Windows Server 2003 – Invirtus says Vista support will be available when Vista is released by Microsoft).
It can reduce the virtual harddisk size, and can optimize the guest OS to run smooth inside a VM. The program runs inside the VM directly from an ISO, and it requires an extra step outside the VM that consists of running Virtual Disk Wizard on the Microsoft platform or vmware-vdiskmanager.exe on the VMware platform.
The installation of the automated version in the host OS is straightforward, and is very similar to the traditional version, as you can see here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
To test it I used Virtual PC 2004 SP1, with an existing VM that I downloaded from MSDN Subscriptions, that contains Windows 2003 SP1, Visual Studio Team System, Team Foundation Server Beta 3 Refresh, SQL Server 2005, Windows SharePoint Services, Office 2003 and so on.
This VM is already precompacted and really shrinked.
I used the VM for some time, and then decided to optimize it.
To start the optimization process I mounted the "InVirtusVMOptimizer.iso" from the CD menu of VPC:
On my VM I have CD autoplay enabled, so VM Optimizer was automatically started. If CD autoplay is disabled, the program can be started from the virtual CD inside the guest OS.
After that a splash screen was displayed on the screen inside the VM:
After some seconds the optimization started without any request or confirmation:
The wizard ran for less than 30 minutes, with only the status bar used to indicate that something was happening.
At the end of the process, without any reboot or manual configuration, the wizard was ready to reboot the VM:
After that, a little explanation of the next step was displayed on the screen, with the link on how to use Virtual Disk Wizard for unexperienced people.
At that point I pressed Finish, the VM was closed, and I ran the Virtual Disk Wizard and selected to compact the VHD on a new file, so I can compare the results:
At the end of the compaction the results were the followings:
The original VHD was 11.969.306.112 bytes, the compacted one was 10.152.729.088 bytes.
I gained 1816577024 bytes or 1,69Gb.
Considering that I started with an already optimized and shrinked VM, that I played with it and that I obtained a VM that is smaller also of the original version (in the bottom part of the image) I'm really impressed and I really like this product. REALLY!
To see the results with another VM, you can check my review of the "traditional" version here.
There are two things to mention:
- In the readme file it is stated that the automated version needs a big quantity of RAM assigned to the VM to run (the more the better...). The purpose is to ensure that Windows will not use the pagefile during optimization. The instructions to change the allocated memory are present in the readme for all the supported products (Virtual PC, Virtual Server, VMware Workstation and VMware GSX Server). It's better to close all the applications inside the VM before running VM Optimizer. If the allocated memory is still insufficient, it's better to use the "traditional" version on that VM. (The traditional version is included in the Corporate Edition).
- Remember to remove the ISO from the VM before using it again. The program is not started automatically after boot, but the risk to restart it when using Windows Explorer is high.
If you want to try the product you can go here to obtain a 14 days trial of the traditional version.
I really like the ease of use and the fact that is completely automatic. During the use I never had a problem, but I assigned at least 768Mb of RAM to every VM that I tried.