I know that VM Optimizer is old news; however, I had not given it enough credit when it first hit the blog circuit.
I recently obtained a copy of VM Optimizer, and ran a few of my Virtual PC images through the gauntlet. I’m not sure if the version I tried a few months back was different than the one I used this time, but the results now were fantastic. On a base Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SP1, I reduced the image from 2.56 GB down to 1.52 GB – which eventually compressed to ~650 MB in RAR format!
I’ll be certain to run the optimizer on my other images when I have the time. Note that the VM Optimizer ran surprisingly quick; however, it is the RAR process that is most time consuming.
For those who are interested, you can obtain an evaluation copy of VM Optimizer here: http://www.invirtus.com/