About This Book

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.

Revision History
Revision	Description
04/2019	Clarified OVF Tool with ESXi as target.
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

VMware welcomes your suggestions for improving our documentation. If you have comments, send your feedback to [email protected].

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.