OVF Tool 4.3.0

Basic information

  • Release date: 17 APR 2018.
  • Official documentation: https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/

Installation

Note

For Windows systems you need the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015.

Do the following process in your machine.

You need a VMware user account in order to download this tool. Once you are registered you can download this tool from here.

To install on a linux system:

  1. Give the necessary permissions to the downloaded file:

$ chmod +x VMware-ovftool-4.0.0-2301625-lin.x86_64.bundle

  1. Execute the file with superuser privileges:

$ sudo ./VMware-ovftool-4.0.0-2301625-lin.x86_64.bundle

Note

If you are on Windows or OS X install it the way you normally would.

Create a OVF from a virtual machine

  1. Find the exact name of the virtual machine that you want to package by using the following command:

$ ovftool vi://root@<host's-ip>/

After you enter the root password it will raise an error message like the following:

Error: Found wrong kind of object (ResourcePool). Possible completions are:
  Virtual-machine1
  Virtual-machine2
  Virtual-machine3
  1. In order to export the virtual machine:

Note

Ensure that no iso file is mounted to the VM. Otherwise a copy of it will be created.

$ ovftool vi://root@<host's-ip>/<vm_name> <exportFileName>.ovf

You may be prompted to use the following option: –allowExtraConfig:

$ ovftool --allowExtraConfig vi://root@<host's-ip>/<vm_name> <exportFileName>.ovf

Note

Is safe to use “–allowExtraConfig”. According to ovftool official manpage it specifies “whether we allow ExtraConfig options in white list. These options are safe as we have a white list to filter out the low-level and potential unsafe options on the VM.”

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