VMware offering low-cost 'test drives' for vCloud service

For customers still apprehensive about cloud adoption, VMware has introduced a new service designed to educate users about the vCloud experience.

Essentially, the vCloud Service Evaluation enables both existing and potential VMware customers with the chance to "test drive" a cloud built on the VMware vCloud platform. Evaluation access includes the full vCloud feature set as well as support for apps and virtual machines that VMware customers already have.

Mathew Lodge, vice president of cloud services at VMware, explained via telephone on Monday that the service is simple and cheap, and making "it very easy for VMware customers to try vCloud."

Lodge explained that the whole registration process shouldn't take much longer than 15 minutes, starting from the sign-up page to verifying billing info to starting the evaluation itself.

Some of the educational resources include how-to guides and community message boards staffed by VMware experts and service providers to answer customer questions.

But the biggest resource should really be the experience of using vCloud itself. Users can deploy pre-built operating systems and application templates as well as use vCloud Connector to move workloads from private clouds or the VMware vSphere environment.

Once users decide they are done with the evaluation, customers have the option of using the vCloud Connector to easily migrate work to a vCloud service provider.

Customers can register for VMware vCloud Service Evaluation starting today, and beta invites will be sent out starting August 27, 2012. Pricing starts at 4 cents per hour for a Linux VM with 1GB of RAM.

Images via VMware