Rob van Hamersveld.nl My digital life

VMware ovf-tool

Last week a colleage asked me for a copy of a test VM i'm using in VMware Workstation 8. Because the VM is 6.20GB in size on disk (and contains 179 files) I wanted to export it as ovf. After searching the internet on how to do this I found the VMware ovf-tool. This commandline tool allows you to export a VM as ovf-file or directly into your vSphere host.

First tip, add a user variable so you can execute the executable from any location;

Covert VM to ovf;

ovftool.exe <path to vmx> <path to ovf>

After the covert you notice the difference in filesize and the number of files;

Import directly to vSphere;

ofvtool.exe <path to vmx> vi://<vSphere host>

Download the tool and userguide from http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/