This OVF Tool User’s Guide provides information about how to use VMware® OVF Tool to package virtual machines and vApps into Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard packages.

Revision History

A revision occurs with each release of the product, or as needed. A revised version can contain minor or major changes. Revision History lists the versions of this manual.

Table 1. Revision History
Revision Description
05/2018 OVF Tool 4.3.0 User’s Guide. Large upload retry, SHA digest fix, NVM and PMEM, Curl update, better logging, VBS and TPM support.
10/2016 OVF Tool 4.2.0 User’s Guide. New options for SSL version and cipher list, NVRAM support for EFI boot.
02/2016 Mention need for explicit extraConfig flags on ESXi hosts.
03/2015 OVF Tool 4.1.0 User’s Guide. Added DVS port group, viUseProxy option for vSphere, and vCloud locators.
12/2014 Increased Open SSL compatibility version to 1.0.1j. See http://www.openssl.org/news/vulnerabilities.html.
10/2014 OVF Tool 4.0.0 User’s Guide. Added --allowAllExtraConfig and --decodeBase64 command line options.
06/2014 OVF Tool 3.5.2 User’s Guide. Increased security for Open SSL.
04/2014 OVF Tool 3.5.1 User’s Guide.
08/2013 OVF Tool 3.5.0 User’s Guide. Includes new command line options.
08/2012 OVF Tool 3.0.1 User’s Guide.
08/2011 OVF Tool 2.1 User’s Guide.
06/2010 OVF Tool 2.0.1 Guide.
05/2009 OVF Tool 1.0 Guide.

Intended Audience

This book is intended for anyone who needs to convert an OVF package to a virtual machine, or a virtual machine to an OVF package. Users typically include: system administrators, software developers, QA engineers, and anyone who need to package or unpackage virtual machines using open industry standards.

Document Feedback

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Technical Support and Education Resources

The following sections describe the technical support resources available to you. To access the current version of this book and other books, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs.

OVF Tool Users’ Forum

To obtain more information and to post questions about OVF Tool, go to the OVF Tool Forum at http://www.vmware.com/go/ovftool.

Support Offerings

To find out how VMware support offerings can help meet your business needs, go to http://www.vmware.com/support/services.