OVF Tool 4.4.1 with vSphere 6.7 introduced the pull mode flag, which allows an ESXi host to directly download (pull) from a remote URL, assuming connectivity. Previously, data had to pass through another system, adding an unnecessary hop if an ESXi host can directly access the remote URL.
Pull mode speeds up file transfers and allows for quicker deployments of Virtual Machines. It enables an option in which OVF source files (VMDKs and others) are copied directly to ESXi from HTTP(S) source without going through ovftool.
Pull mode is actually a capability of ESXi hosts that ovftool takes advantage of. If property pullModeSupported is true in the HttpNfcLease managed object, then pull mode is triggered for deployments using the --pullUploadMode flag. Here are caveats for this option:
- The ESXi host must have access to HTTP(S) source, and permission to view the source files.
- The source must be HTTP(S) and not a filesystem based URL, for example http://www.example.com:80/path/to/package.ova or https://www.example.com:443/path/to/package.ova
- The ESXi host validates the source HTTP server before access, so the Thumbprint of the HTTP source server should be supplied. If the Thumbprint is not supplied the ESXi host may or may not be able to validate the server. If the source HTTP server is not known to the ESXi then source validation fails and deployment fails also.
- Validation described in last step, with Pull mode, cannot be suppressed with the --noSSLVerify flag.
- Flag --verifyViTargetManifest will not work with Pull mode due to the way checksum of the transferred file is done. In Pull mode ovftool is not involved in transferring the file so it cannot calculate the checksum and compare it to what the manifest shows.
Syntax and example of working command (final two lines are continuations):
ovftool --pullUploadMode source target ovftool --acceptAllEulas --pullUploadMode https://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/nested-esxi/AV50_EX_OVF.ovf vi://user:[email protected]/Datacenter/host/Cluster
