Good day all! this blog is exclusively for deploying VMs’ through OVF/OVA. It covers screenshots and step-by-step guide.

Points to Cover: –

1. Deploy a Virtual Machine from an OVF/OVA.

1. Deploy a Virtual Machine from an OVF/OVA

Steps to Deploy OVF:

To start with, Login to webclient. In our LAB, we have direct root access to ESXi host as indicated in image below

• Choose Create/Register VM.

• In the next dialogue box, choose “Deploy a Virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file” and click next.

• In the next screen, you need to put the VM name. It has be unique and carefully decided since all the VM files would use the same prefix.  You alss need to specify the path of the OVA/OVF files.

• You can guide it to the path of OVA/OVF template as indicated in the image below. In our testing LAB we are going to use “Damn Small Linux”.

• Name of the OVA template and VM can be verified before clicking Next. As indicated below.

• Now we are ready to select the Storage. Ensure that we have enough free space on the destination datastore. Free space can be verified in the same screen and mentioned below. Click “Next” once ready.

• In next screen, we need to choose the Disk provisioning type, Thin or Thick.
  • Thin-This type provisioning  consumes only the space that it needs initially and grows based on demand.
  • Thick-It consumes all the space at the time of creation regardless what blocks are actively being used inside the datastore/disk.

• At this stage, you must verify the provided inputs and click finish when ready.

• Once you click “Finish”. You can see the status of upload of OVA under the “Recent tasks” as seen in the image below.

• Below image clearly indicates that VM has been deployed through OVA. Once it shows the same in the “recent tasks” we are ready to power On the VM.  You may proceed with the configuration of the VM.

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