Table of Contents
Overview
The OVF tool is used to upload OVF, OVA, and ISO files to VMware products. For this instance we are going to be uploading items to a VMware Cloud Director, commonly called VCD, so we can use those items within Organizations to deploy VMs, etc.
Procedure
- We need to ensure the latest OVF tool is installed from VMware: https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/get-download?downloadGroup=OVFTOOL443&download=true&fileId=74320a4eb35e621513b247c6c0002e03&uuId=afad978f-68fb-44bc-b116-cfe481bf8a11
- After we install the latest OVF tool we need to launch a standard command prompt. NOTE: This will not work from inside a PowerShell window.
- Change directory to where the OVF tool is installed at
- cd ‘C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool’
- Execute the command to upload the new object in question. Ex:
- ovftool C:\pkgs\x86_64-dvd.iso “vcloud://user:YOU-CANT-HAVE-MY-PW@full-URL-or-IP?org=Name-of-Org&media=Media-Name&catalog=Existing Catalog Name&vdc=Org-VDC-Name”
Breakdown of syntax:
| Input | Purpose |
|---|---|
| ovftool | Calling on the tool itself. |
| C:\pkgs\x86_64-dvd.iso | Location of file on the Windows system we are trying to upload. |
| “vcloud:// | Type of service to log into. |
| rah:YOU-CANT-HAVE-MY-PW | Username (or service account) & PW to use to auth with. |
| @full_url_or_ip_address | The Cloud Director we are logging into. |
| ?org=3214443 | The Organization associated with the catalog in question. |
| &media= | What type of file we are uploading, it can be either media or vappTemplate |
| E-Rocky-90 | The name we will call the uploaded media/template. |
| &catalog=ExNet Provisioning Media | The Catalog that is located in the Organization that we are going to upload to. |
| &vdc=3214443-IAD-MGMT-CAT | The Organization VDC that we are uploading to. |
OVF Tool CLI generator
This tool allows you to input several values in order to output the command required to run a successful import using the VMware OVF tool. OVF Tool CLI Generator