Video Tutorial - Downloading OVF/OVA Files from Navisite Cloud Director Using the OVFTool
Audio Transcript - Downloading OVF/OVA Files from Navisite Cloud Director Using the OVFTool
Hello everyone and welcome! My name is Hannah Warren. I’m here today for Navisite, giving a brief demonstration of our Navisite Cloud Director (or NCD) platform, which you can access through the Proximity login portal.
Quick note about today’s tutorial: this is a general-level tutorial with our product in its current iteration. If you have specific questions or issues with your environment, please make sure you contact our Customer Service department.
For a more detailed tutorial, please visit our Knowledge Base, which is linked on the screen (http://navisite.uservoice.com) and also in the video description below.
And with that, we’ll get started!
This demonstration will provide a step-by-step tutorial for downloading OVF or OVA files from NCD.
In case you’re unfamiliar with OVF or OVA files, OVF stands for “open virtualization format”, which is an open standard for packaging and distributing software to be run in virtual machines. As such, OVFs and OVAs are not specific to VMware.
An OVF file is an xml-formatted file that defines virtual systems which can then be deployed as a virtual machine. An OVA is single tar archive file consisting of the files that make up an OVF.
We will accomplish our downloads during this segment using a VMware-provided tool called OVFTool.
To use the OVFTool, first you need to create an account on VMware.com, and then download and install the tool on the destination machine for your OVF download.
I have already installed the OVFTool on my local host, which happens to be Windows Server 2008. VMware OVFTool does support multiple operating systems. You can check on the VMware knowledge base to ensure your OS is compatible. As of the time of this recording, you should install version 4.1.0 of the OVFTool, which is compatible with our version of vCloud Director, running under NCD.
It’s very important to remember that individual VMs cannot be downloaded from NCD – you can only download vApps.
You can use the OVFTool to download vApp templates or vApps from vCloud Director, and NCD will cleverly give you the command to use the OVFTool for downloads.
The process for downloading either a vApp template or a vApp is pretty similar, but the location of each command varies slightly. For this demonstration, we’re going to show you how to download a template, but after we’re done doing that, we’ll also show you where to get the command if you want to do the same procedure but download a vApp instead.
So from the console of my local machine, at the Dashboard, I am going to click on the “Assets” navigation item in the left menu, and then “Templates.” This will bring me to a list of all the templates that are available for my user name and I’m going to click My Templates - toggle over to that side - and “vApp-Container” is the one that I want to download today. At the vApp container detail page for the vApp template I’m going to click the download button.
And you’ll get a popup that says “Download Template”. We then want to toggle over to the right tab to use the ovftool to do this download. I want an OVA archive file this time. And I will just select this command line that NCD provides me. Very simple.
And then in my command window I’m going to provide it that command and press enter. And it will come back with a request for my password for my NCD account.
It’s very important to remember that individual VMs cannot be downloaded from NCD – you can only download vApps.
You can use the OVFTool to download vApp templates or vApps from vCloud Director, and NCD will cleverly give you the command to use the OVFTool for downloads.
The process for downloading either a vApp template or a vApp is pretty similar, but the location of each command varies slightly. For this demonstration, we’re going to show you how to download a template, but after we’re done doing that, we’ll also show you where to get the command if you want to do the same procedure but download a vApp instead.
So from the console of my local machine, at the Dashboard, I am going to click on the “Assets” navigation item in the left menu, and then “Templates.” This will bring me to a list of all the templates that are available for my user name and I’m going to click My Templates - toggle over to that side - and “vApp-Container” is the one that I want to download today. At the vApp container detail page for the vApp template I’m going to click the download button.
And you’ll get a popup that says “Download Template”. We then want to toggle over to the right tab to use the ovftool to do this download. I want an OVA archive file this time. And I will just select this command line that NCD provides me. Very simple.
And then in my command window I’m going to provide it that command and press enter. And it will come back with a request for my password for my NCD account.
You have the option to change the name of the file downloaded if you’d like. If you don’t, the file will get the same name as the vApp in NCD. The username is included in the command, but don’t forget to give your password in the command line when prompted, just as I did a second ago. This is the same password you use to log into NCD.
So let’s talk about what’s happening now that we’ve entered the OVFTool command.
vCD now begins the process of converting the vApp template or vApp into the archive format that I requested. The duration of this process depends primarily on two variables: the vApp template or vApp size, and the vCloud Director loading at the time of your request. As it’s created, the archive file is stored in a temporary transfer buffer within vCloud Director.
When the archived file creation process is complete, then the OVFTool begins the download process. Once the download starts, obviously the bandwidth of your connection to vCD will affect download time.
Based on these variables, it’s very difficult to say for sure how long the process will take overall. By default, the OVFTool will wait one hour, as it’s doing right now – waiting for the task on the server - for the creation of the archive file to complete. If the creation takes longer than one hour, which is not uncommon, it’s possible that the OVFTool may stop listening before the archive file is ready.
If that happens, don’t panic. All you have to do is hit the “up arrow” in your command window and re-start the listening process.
Hitting the up arrow and restarting the listening process will not re-start the archive creation process, but it will restart the OVFTool’s patient waiting for the file to be created.
With all that said, there is a command line argument you can give the OVFTool to extend the amount of time it will wait for the archive file creation to complete. The syntax of that argument is available in the video description below.
Here we are back at my local host. You’ll see that the ovftool will say “done” when the archive file creation process is complete on vCloud Director and the OVF or OVA file you requested is ready for downloading. At this point, the OVFTool will start the download process and will say “writing” as the file is transferred from vCD and written on the hard disk on your local machine.
You’ll see a percentage documenting the writing process on your disk; when it hits 100% the OVFtool will exit and you will have your new file.
If you have a network interruption during the download and the OVFTool download process stalls, you’ll need to hit the “up arrow” and the “Enter” key again to restart the OVFTool’s download and write process.
This will not re-start the archive creation process, only the OVFTool’s download and write.
Note that the maximum file size for downloads using the OVFTool is 500 GB thick provisioned; if you need to download an OVF file larger than 500 gigabytes, please contact our Customer Service department for help.
To round out our segment today, let’s go over how to get the OVFTool command for downloading a vApp. From the dashboard in Proximity I am going to go to the left navigation menu, choose “Assets” and then “vApps” this time. And inside vApps I’m going to go to “My vApps” and let’s say we want this one – ‘PaintKnife’.
I’ll click on it and it is very much the same process. Click download and you’ll see a pop-up labeled download vApp this time. Click the right tab. Choose the format you like. You can then use this command line in a command window on the host machine where you want your archive file downloaded.
That wraps up this video installment. Thanks for tuning in to this demonstration in NCD. As always, we’d appreciate your feedback! If you found this video helpful or have ideas for videos in the future, we do source those from comments on our content, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with us. You can follow our YouTube channel for future videos, and there are 24/7 detailed demonstrations with screenshots and step-by-step “How Tos” at our knowledge base: https://navisite.uservoice.com/knowledgebase
Thanks for tuning in. I’m Hannah Warren, and I’ll see you next time!
So let’s talk about what’s happening now that we’ve entered the OVFTool command.
vCD now begins the process of converting the vApp template or vApp into the archive format that I requested. The duration of this process depends primarily on two variables: the vApp template or vApp size, and the vCloud Director loading at the time of your request. As it’s created, the archive file is stored in a temporary transfer buffer within vCloud Director.
When the archived file creation process is complete, then the OVFTool begins the download process. Once the download starts, obviously the bandwidth of your connection to vCD will affect download time.
Based on these variables, it’s very difficult to say for sure how long the process will take overall. By default, the OVFTool will wait one hour, as it’s doing right now – waiting for the task on the server - for the creation of the archive file to complete. If the creation takes longer than one hour, which is not uncommon, it’s possible that the OVFTool may stop listening before the archive file is ready.
If that happens, don’t panic. All you have to do is hit the “up arrow” in your command window and re-start the listening process.
Hitting the up arrow and restarting the listening process will not re-start the archive creation process, but it will restart the OVFTool’s patient waiting for the file to be created.
With all that said, there is a command line argument you can give the OVFTool to extend the amount of time it will wait for the archive file creation to complete. The syntax of that argument is available in the video description below.
Here we are back at my local host. You’ll see that the ovftool will say “done” when the archive file creation process is complete on vCloud Director and the OVF or OVA file you requested is ready for downloading. At this point, the OVFTool will start the download process and will say “writing” as the file is transferred from vCD and written on the hard disk on your local machine.
You’ll see a percentage documenting the writing process on your disk; when it hits 100% the OVFtool will exit and you will have your new file.
If you have a network interruption during the download and the OVFTool download process stalls, you’ll need to hit the “up arrow” and the “Enter” key again to restart the OVFTool’s download and write process.
This will not re-start the archive creation process, only the OVFTool’s download and write.
Note that the maximum file size for downloads using the OVFTool is 500 GB thick provisioned; if you need to download an OVF file larger than 500 gigabytes, please contact our Customer Service department for help.
To round out our segment today, let’s go over how to get the OVFTool command for downloading a vApp. From the dashboard in Proximity I am going to go to the left navigation menu, choose “Assets” and then “vApps” this time. And inside vApps I’m going to go to “My vApps” and let’s say we want this one – ‘PaintKnife’.
I’ll click on it and it is very much the same process. Click download and you’ll see a pop-up labeled download vApp this time. Click the right tab. Choose the format you like. You can then use this command line in a command window on the host machine where you want your archive file downloaded.
That wraps up this video installment. Thanks for tuning in to this demonstration in NCD. As always, we’d appreciate your feedback! If you found this video helpful or have ideas for videos in the future, we do source those from comments on our content, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with us. You can follow our YouTube channel for future videos, and there are 24/7 detailed demonstrations with screenshots and step-by-step “How Tos” at our knowledge base: https://navisite.uservoice.com/knowledgebase
Thanks for tuning in. I’m Hannah Warren, and I’ll see you next time!