Virtualization is all the rage these days; it's used by developers, Mac users, Windows aficionados, and Linux fans to make life a little easier in a multi-OS world. As more non-enterprise users begin taking advantage of virtual machines, virtualization companies are stepping up their offerings in order to make things as easy as possible. For instance, VMware's vCenter Converter enables users to create VMware virtual machines from physical machines as well as disk images, and was updated to version 4.0 last week. It now contains even more options for generating virtual machines.

VMware Fusion, the company's Mac virtualization software, has become very popular, but it can do even more when combined with something like Converter. As the name suggests, VMware Converter creates VMware virtual machines from a wide range of sources, including physical machines. Converter 4.0 now supports the creating of virtual machines from Windows Server 2008 physical machines, as well as Linux machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Even better, Converter can now create virtual machines from third-party formats like Norton Ghost, and (of course) Parallels Desktop.

Although Converter doesn't actually run on OS X, all of the virtual machines that it creates can be used on VMware Fusion, so Mac users now have an easier way to create Linux virtual machines if they need it for development or just want to try out Ubuntu. Converter 4.0 also contains a few other new features that i didn't discuss, but which can be found in the release notes. The software is available for free from VMware, so give it a whirl if you're curious.