However, you can deploy an OVF or OVA template from any local file system accessible from the vSphere Web Client, or from a remote Web server. Deploying an OVF or OVA template is similar to deploying a virtual machine from a template. What is OVA?Īn OVA (open virtual appliance or application) is merely a single-file distribution of the same file package, stored in the TAR format.ĭeploying an OVF or OVA template allows you to add pre-configured virtual machines or vApps to your vCenter Server or ESXi inventory. The optional disk image files can be VMware vmdk’s, or any other supported disk image file. An OVF package structure consists of a number of files: a descriptor file, optional manifest and certificate files, optional disk images, and optional resource files (such as ISO’s). Before starting into the process of how to convert OVA to OVF using the VMware OVF tool, Let’s understand what is OVA and OVF? What is OVF?Īn OVF refers to the Open Virtualization Format, which is a “packaging standard designed to address the portability and deployment of virtualization appliances”. For that, we need to extract the OVA files as OVF or need to convert as VMX format to deploy the appliances using vSphere client. I noticed the deployment of virtual appliances using the OVA format failed many times. virtual appliances mostly available in OVA format. I am sure most of us would have deployed a lot of virtual appliances into our VMware infrastructure. Almost all the software is packaged as a pre-configured virtual machine image as a virtual appliance. In this article, We will talk about what is OVA and OVF along with the difference between them and also we will learn how to Convert OVA to OVF using the VMware OVF tool Virtual appliances are most commonly used is the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). Installation of a software appliance on a virtual machine and packaging that into an image creates a virtual appliance. Diff VCenter 5.5 appliance and vCenter on WIndowsĪ virtual appliance is a pre-configured virtual machine image, ready to run on a hypervisor.

What is ova