You can deploy the VMware Cloud Director appliance as an OVF template by using the VMware OVF Tool. You must deploy the first member of a VMware Cloud Director server group as a primary cell. You can deploy a subsequent member of a VMware Cloud Director server group as a standby or VMware Cloud Director application cell. VMware OVF Tool. The Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) is a virtual machine distribution format that supports sharing virtual machines between products and organizations. The format facilitates the use of virtual appliances, which are preconfigured virtual machines that package applications with the operating system they require.
Deploying OVF Packages. Importing an OVF Package. Exporting Virtual Machines to OVF Packages. Displaying Summary Information. Validating an OVF 1.0 or OVF 1.1 Descriptor. Downloading an OVF Package from a Protected Web Site. Overwriting a Running Virtual Machine or vApp from vSphere. Canceling the VMware OVF Tool While it Is Running. The VMware OVF tool command-line utility will be installed into your Windows system. Export a VM using the OVF tool. Once the VMware OFV tool is installed, it is time to export our VM. Make sure you have access from your local machine (target) to the ESXi host (source) allocating the VM to be exported. Power off the VM. OVF Tool Definitions of Source and Target Locators describes the source and target locators. For details, see Specifying a Locator. If you are using an operating system where spaces are not allowed in paths on the command line, and need the full path to run OVF Tool, enclose the path in quotes as shown below.
OVF is a file format that supports exchange of virtual appliances across products and platforms. OVA is a single-file distribution of the same file package.
The OVF and OVA formats offer the following advantages:
- OVF and OVA files are compressed, allowing for faster downloads.
- The vSphere Client validates an OVF or OVA file before importing it, and ensures that it is compatible with the intended destination server. If the appliance is incompatible with the selected host, it cannot be imported and an error message appears.
- OVF and OVA can encapsulate multi-tiered applications and more than one virtual machine.
Exporting OVF or OVA templates allows you to create virtual appliances that can be imported by other users. You can use the export function to distribute pre-installed software as a virtual appliance, or to distributing template virtual machines to users. You can make the OVF or OVA file available to users who cannot access your vCenter Server inventory.
Deploying an OVF or OVA template allows you to add pre-configured virtual machines or vApps to your vCenter Server or ESXi inventory. Deploying an OVF or OVA template is similar to deploying a virtual machine from a template. However, you can deploy an OVF or OVA template from any local file system accessible from the vSphere Client, or from a remote Web server. The local file systems can include local disks (such as C:), removable media (such as CDs or USB keychain drives), and shared network drives.
As discussed in Chapter 1, you can use the OVF Tool to package virtual machines as vApps (ready-to-use virtual machines with operating systems and/or applications). The package formats supported by the OVF Tool can be read and/or imported by other VMware and third-party software.
The table below describes each of the supported formats:
Vmware Ovf Tool
Full Name | ||
|---|---|---|
OVF (.ovf) | Open Virtualization Format | National ANSI standard for packaging software for virtual machines, originally created by an industry task force known as the Distributed Management Task Force (DTMF). An OVF package includes: a descriptor file, optional manifest and certificate files, optional disk images, and optional resource files (such as ISOs). The disk image files can be files in VMware’s .vmdk disk image format or in any other supported disk image format. OVF packages can be used by the software of any hypervisor or processor architecture that supports this format. |
OVA (.ova) | Open Virtual Appliance | A TAR archive that contains an OVF package. |
VMX (.vmx) | Virtual Machine Configuration File | When you create a new virtual machine, this file is created to store information about the operating system, disk sizes, networking, and virtual hardware. Files in this format and the .vmdk format are sometimes referred to together as, ‘VMware runtime format’. |
VMDK (.vmdk) | Virtual Machine Disk | Files with this extension may contain disk characteristics (,vmdk), contents (-flat.vmdk), or snapshot files (-delta.vmdk). These files are called out on the OVF Tool command line, but may exist within the package. |
VI (vi://) | VMware Infrastructure | This is an older term that originated with ESX 3, but is still seen in the command line syntax for the OVF Tool. As an OVF command line option, ‘vi//’ is used before the credentials and path to a server. |
vCloud | vCloud Director format | The vCloud Director REST API makes basic transfer between clouds possible using OVF packages, which preserve application properties, networking configuration and other settings. |
ISO (.iso) | Optical Image File | An ISO archive is a CD/DVD image. Creating a package as an ISO image allows you to install a virtual appliance using a CD ROM drive. This type of archive is called an ISO because it was created by the International Standards Organization’s 9660 standard. |
FLP (.flp) | Floppy Disk Image File | Use this format if you need to transfer data from a floppy drive or to the virtual machine floppy drive. Instructions are available in Knowledge Base article 1739. |
vApprun | vApprun | This format allows you to run a virtual appliance on VMware Workstation or Fusion. You can use the OVF Tool to convert vApps to the vApprun format, and you can use VMware Workstation to convert vApps to an OVF format. |
Use the OVF Tool with the Target Type option to specify the target out as OVF, OVA, VMX, VI, vCloud, ISO, FLP, vApprun.
In this following example, the target type is set to the ‘vmx’ or VMware runtime format (.vmx and .vmdk files)
Vmware Ovf Tool 4.4 Download
> ovftool -tt=vmx /ovfs/my_vapp.ovf /vms/
Vmware Ovf Tool Export Vm
The resulting files are: /vms/my_vapp/my_vapp.vmx and /vms/my_vapp/my_vapp.vmdk files (like the contents of a typical virtual machine directory).