Purpose of the article: How to manage the virtual machines when we two different datacenters.

Intended Audience: Managed services – IT Infrastructure – network and server.

Tools and Technology: ESXi, vCenter – Tools, VMware – Technology.

Key words: Export OVF Template, vCenter.

How to export the VM as OVF Template from ESXi & vCenter Appliance:

VMware has many features like Migrations, Snapshots, Clones, Templates, etc. When we want to move the VM from one host to another host, we can do migration using vCenter Appliance. But it has some dependencies like both the source and destination host should have a connected network; we should have vCenter in the environment and certain hardware dependencies.

If we do not have network connectivity between one environment to another, we can use the feature called “Export OVF Template”.

Exporting OVF Template can be done directly from ESXi or vCenter appliance. Export OVF functionality will directly download the VM OVF Template files to our local system and we can move/copy these files to wherever we want.

So, let us see how to Export VM as an OVF template from vCenter Appliance:

Prerequisites:

1. Make sure the VM does not have any snapshots.
2. VM should be in a power-off state.

Step 1:

Login into the vCenter appliance and select the VM which you want to export.

Right click on vm -> Select Template.

Click on the export OVF Template.

Step 2:

Here you can mention the name of your OVF Template.

And you can also select advanced settings if required.

Click on the OK button.

Step 3:

Once we click on Ok it will start exporting the virtual machine on your local system.

To save each file associated with the template (. ovf, vmdk, .mf), Click OK and respond to the prompts.

Note: It will take time, depending on the network speed and size of the virtual machine.

Using this method, we can easily download the virtual machine as OVF and deploy the same into another vCenter appliance or ESXi.

References:

VMware

Contact Details:

N.Jayachandra

Sr. Specialist, Cloud & Engineering-Infrastructure Services

MOURI Tech