Ovftool is a must have for ESXi user

When download a sample VM image

Today, to kick-start my cloudera learning journey, I finally downloaded a cloudera getting started image from cloudera official site. Well this image is not so huge, I still don’t have much space to store it on my local machine.

As I have a ESX host siting several cubes away from my seat. I decide to upload the image to the host and run from there.

Import a VM to ESX

After play around the ESX client for some minutes, I find that I can only import an OVF or OVA image.

Upload VM to ESX storage directly

Alternatively, one have to upload the whole VM image by using the storage manager, then try to add the vmx file to inventory from there.

As said, and sad, the image is a bit big, my VM image upload process end up successful, but the VM added from storage manager failed to start up. An error of “can not find vmdisk xxxx” with a mysterious vmdk filename showing up.

Convert and then import, in one STEP

The last solution for me to upload the image to ESX is to convert the vm image to OVF format and then import to ESX host after the conversion.

But wait, the OVF tool is actually able to take one step further. It is able to ESX host directly. It has this feature built-in, and the conversion and uploading is really convenient according to OVF tool document:

Deploying an OVF Package Directly on an ESXi Host
The following command deploys an OVF package on an ESXi host.
> ovftool package.ovf vi://my.esx-machine.example.com/
If your host has multiple data stores, use the -ds option:
> ovftool package.ovf -ds=storage1 vi://my.esx-machine.example.com/
See also "Special Consideration - Running the OVF Tool from ESXi instead of vCenter" on page 12.

My own command looks like following:

root@CN00059491 C:\Users\root\Downloads\cqvm
> "c:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool\ovftool.exe" --skipManifestGeneration
Opening VMX source: ..\cloudera-quickstart-vm-5.12.0-0-vmware\cloudera-quickstar
Accept SSL fingerprint (45:32:08:70:60:0F:A8:92:A1:53:C4:3D:02:2E:E5:35:63:1B:C3
Fingerprint will be added to the known host file
Write 'yes' or 'no'
yes
Enter login information for target vi://100.98.40.225/
Username: root
Password: ********
Opening VI target: vi://root@100.98.40.225:443/
Deploying to VI: vi://root@100.98.40.225:443/
Transfer Completed
Completed successfully

My VM started up successfully without any problem. Happy ending.