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

  1. 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
  2. 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.
  3. Change directory to where the OVF tool is installed at
    • cd ‘C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool’
  4. 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