You can deploy the OVA file on vSphere 5.x for use during development or for production. Download the OVA file from the VMware download site. OVF & OVA both are virtualization file format’s. Which are used to export & import virtual machines from one server to another. It can be used in VMware, Virtual Box & RHEL virtualization. In this post i will show you how to deploy exported ovf or ova file in your virtual infrastructure. Check below steps to deploy ova or ovf:-Step 1.
Recently I had massive problems with deploying some VMware appliances under vSphere 6.5. Independently of the frontend (Host Client, HTML 5 Client, Web Client, C# Client) I was unable to deploy templates in a clean way at all – mostly aborts and “generic system failures” occured.
Mark Brookfield gave me the tip to use OVF Tool instead of a graphical interface. The console utility focusses at importing/exporting OVA/OVF templates between multiple VMware products and is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux und App macOS erhältlich. The tool can be downloaded for free.
Basically, it is executed like this:
Major parameters (some are optional) are:
Parameter | Function |
-n / –name | Target VM name |
-vf / –vmFolder | Folder for storing the VM |
–acceptAllEulas | Automatically accept EULA |
-ds / –datastore | Target datastore |
-dm / –diskMode | Disk provisioning mode (for vSphere: thin, thick or eagerZeroedThick) |
–net:NIC-name:portgroup | Network binding (portgroup is mapped to NIC name) |
–ipProtocol | IP protocoll: IPv4, IPv6 |
–prop | Assigning an OVA/OVF parameter (e.g. Root password) |
–deploymentOption | Selecting a vApp configuration (if supported by template) |
–powerOn | Turning on VM after provisioning |
The target locator needs to have a specific schema I was not aware of at first sight. Some examples for vSphere:
Locator | Description |
vi://myvcenter/mydatacenter/host/mycluster | Arbitrary host of a dedicated datacenter and cluster |
vi://admin:admin@myvcenter/mydatacenter/host/mycluster | like above, but with fixed login information |
vi://myvcenter/mydatacenter/vm/myfolder/myvm | Arbitrary datacenter, VM folder and name |
vi://myvcenter/mydatacenter/host/myesx | Arbitrary ESXi host of a datacenter |
vi://myvcenter/mydatacenter/host/myesx/Resources/myresource | like above, but with arbitrary resource pool |
Additional examples can be found in the utility online help:
The OVA/OVF source does not need to be stored on the local hard drive, it can also be downloaded from a web server (http://path, https://path) or FTP server (ftp://pfad).
Before deploying a template, it is a good idea to have a look at the available options. For example, this is required to get information about required network interfaces:
In this case, valid assignments for the Management Network and Witness Network need to be made. Afterwards, check-out the available properties:
Some are required – like the root password in this example – some are optional. Some OVA/OVF templates also offer deployment options; also called “t-shirt sizes“:
This template offers three fixed configuration sizes – the requirements and use-cases are explained.
The completed commands can look like this:
If you are receiving an warning such as:
You might want to have a look at the vApp options pane in the VM configuration. There might be a missing parameter you want to fix before turning on the appliance.
Using the tool I was finally able to deploy additional vApps in my home lab – too bad, that this did not work using one of the plenty frontends. I don’t know whether the root cause for this issue is based in my lab or if it is just an generic issue (bug?). Really need to dig deeper regarding this…