VKernel Corporation will launch a virtual appliance at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas next week that will allow IT staff to test additions to a VMware ESX infrastructure before they are introduced.

The VKernel Modeler will allow users to evaluate the performance impact of changes before they are made in the production environment.

"Changes to the virtual infrastructure can impact stability and performance, " said Alex Bakman, chief executive at VKernel.

"This product provides a sandbox utility to instantly model 'what if' scenarios to test, measure and validate the impact before going live to ensure that performance is not compromised."

The company claimed that by quickly modelling scenarios with simple drag-and-drop and import commands, Modeler enables users to see immediately whether resource constraints will be exceeded and whether performance issues will occur.

The appliance will be available as a beta trial download within 15 days of VMworld ending.

A full production version will then be available after a 30-day beta period starting at $199 (£113) per CPU socket.