CloudShare VM Import tool makes it easy to move virtual machines to the cloud

CloudShare officially has a new VM Import tool so you can quickly and simply migrate VMware and Oracle VirtualBox VMs (virtual machines) to the cloud. CloudShare is one of the top suppliers of specialized cloud-based IT lab environments, including software training, development and testing, and more. CloudShare features an extensible library of customizable templates that include built-in licensing for SharePoint, Windows, and a number of other operating systems and applications.

However, they also recognize that sometimes it’s more “convenient to import existing VMs to re-create your unique environment in the cloud.” That’s why they’ve created their new VM Import tool.

Why is the CloudShare VM Import tool useful?

CloudShare VM import tool

This is particularly true with large files. And, unfortunately, it’s usually impossible to see these errors until the entire uploading process has finished.

The CEO and founder of CloudShare, Zvi Guterman, told ITPro that “what we are trying to do is simplify the consumption of IT environments in the cloud. We looked at what IT professionals needed and tried to work to improve it.”

These improvements include the replacement of slow FTP uploads with UDP, for example. He explains, “FTP is too slow, it doesn’t use acceleration, and if connections break, it sometimes doesn’t go back to where it left off.”

The new CloudShare VM Import tool, on the other hand, makes sure that there aren’t any potential errors right away. This means that the majority of errors are noticed at the beginning of the process, in the first few minutes, rather than after the hours it took to upload the file.

With this, they explain that it becomes easier to re-create your own environment in the cloud, even if it is quite complex. Additionally, CloudShare’s new tool has a unique auto-correct feature. Users are able to accept or override the suggestions, still leaving them with ultimate control over the process.

The CloudShare VM Import tool also saves users from having to work with conversion tools and attempts to offer clear solutions to any errors that occur. This all runs in the background, so you’re free to complete other tasks while the data is being uploaded.

“The end result,” writes CloudShare, “is a custom CloudShare template that includes initial networking, and which can easily be joined with existing pre-built CloudShare templates to create a complex environment in no time.”

Some of the other benefits of this new VM Import tool are its intuitive process that helps to reduce the demands forced onto users’ resources. It does this by improving self-service capabilities and support for many different hypervisors, including VMware, vSphere, and Oracle VM VirtualBox.This tool also offers simple migration, even with complex environments, to the cloud “without the need to re-architect or restructure on-premises applications.” These features, coupled with its speed, reliability, and automated error correction, make it a very useful migration tool.

Michal Frenkel, the director of product for CloudShare, explained that the CloudShare VM Import tool is part of their ongoing efforts to simplify the cloud. “CloudShare makes it easy to re-create and scale extremely complex environments in the cloud, and with our new VM Import tool, we’ve made that task even easier.”

She continued to explain that “unlike general-purpose cloud companies, we provide our customers not with bricks and mortar, but rather with a completed house. As a result, people outside of the IT department can take full advantage of the cloud’s power for training, sales enablement, and dev/testing.”

While the CloudShare VM Import tool migration has competition from vendors like Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, they’re expected to continue growing and add support for more VM hypervisors in the future.

What is CloudShare?

CloudShare VM import tool

Although we’ve explained that CloudShare was created to provide specialized cloud-based IT lab environments, you still might not understand exactly what it is.

CloudShare was founded relatively recently in 2007, but some of their customers already include large companies such as Dell, HP, Atlassian, and Palo Alto Networks. Their lab environments are geared toward three main categories: training & education, sales demos & PoCs, and development & testing.

With training and education, CloudShare gives you the ability to build customized training labs with pre-made and ready-to-use templates. This gives students or interns the opportunity to get hands-on experience in an environment that is the same as in real life. It also offers advanced features particular to training, so you can make sure that employees, customer,s and partners are properly prepared.

This product gives you numerous different IT resources, including “unlimited virtualized hardware and software: servers, networking, storage, operating systems, application licenses, and more.”

Sales Demos and Proof of Concepts (PoCs) allows you to show potential clients your true product. With its features, CloudShare helps you create an exact replica of your production environment so prospective clients can experience it first-hand, simply and effectively.

If you’re using CloudShare for this purpose, you’ll also have access to the IT resources mentioned above. These demos and PoCs can last for any amount of time and can be guided demos, unattended demos on-demand, extended self-service PoCs as well as 24/7 persistent environments for sales engineers.

Lastly, their development and testing section is rather self-explanatory. This includes tools that are specifically designed to help streamline and accelerate the development process through their REST API and application integration.

This dev-and-test solution consists of two main steps. First, you have to build your environment how you want it. You can use your own environment template, one created by CloudShare, or from scratch with individual VMs (yours or theirs).

Second, you can just upload your bits and additional packages and tools that are relevant to your software. After this, you can simply get to work. According to CloudShare, “Everything is there for you whenever you need it. Just like on-prem … but even better in the cloud.”

Photo credit: CloudShare

About The Author

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Scroll to Top