Vizioncore has released a tool that can optimise the size of virtual machines, enabling businesses to reclaim significant amounts of storage space, the company claimed.

Available immediately, vOptimizer Pro is designed to work with Windows virtual machines running within VMware infrastructure, and can perform a fully automated partition adjustment of any ESX-based virtual machine.

Vizioncore said that up to 80 per cent of a typical virtual machine's storage footprint might be unused space allocated during provisioning.

"Virtualised storage can be one of the most expensive components of a virtual infrastructure, but customers continue to rely on a lot of educated guesswork to predict their storage requirements," said Vizioncore director of product management Christopher Page.

VOptimizer Pro automates the complex task of resizing Virtual Machine Disk Format virtual machine disk images up or down, depending on the needs of the virtual machine. It achieves this by mounting an offline virtual machine, inspecting its file system and operating system, and then resizing the NTFS partition as necessary.

Scheduled runs of the tool can thus prevent virtual machines from running out of disk space as well as recovering over-allocated storage, the company said.

Vizioncore vOptimizer Pro is now available from the company's channel partner network and costs $299 (£201) per processor socket.