VMware Converter Standalone 4.0 (Build 146302) was made available for download February 12th. Converter provides an easy-to-use solution to automate the process of creating VMware virtual machines from physical machines (running Windows and Linux), other virtual machine formats, and third-party image formats. Through an easy to use interface and a centralized management console, Converter Standalone can quickly and reliably convert multiple local and remote physical machines without any disruptions or downtime.

New features in this release include:
* Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Linux (RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu) as source
* Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Windows Server 2008 as source
* Hot cloning improvements to clone any incremental changes to physical machine during the P2V conversion process
* Support for converting new third-party image formats including Parallels Desktop virtual machines, newer versions of Symantec, Acronis, and StorageCraft
* Workflow automation enhancements to include automatic source shutdown, automatic start-up of the destination virtual machine as well as shutting down one or more services at the source and starting up selected services at the destination
* Target disk selection and the ability to specify how the volumes are laid out in the new destination virtual machine
* Destination virtual machine configuration, including CPU, memory, and disk controller type