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EricTrentMiller
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vSphere Command-Line Interface

I was looking at the command reference for the vCLI and have two questions:

are there any commands for exporting ovfs?  I looked pretty good and couldn't find any.  are there any commands for exporting .vmdks to make offline backups?

I noticed there was an option for vmotion using the vCLI...does that require a full vSphere license, or is it usable on just the free version of ESXi with the vCLI?

THanks.

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mcowger
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The ovftool doesn't come with vCLI, but is available for windows, mac & linux from vmware:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/automationtools/ovf

For exporting VMDKs, you could modify the file browser scripts to grab them from the datastore, or look at William Lam's ghettoVCB scripts.

For vMotion, the script only works with a vMotion-enabled vCenter - no way to make it happen with raw ESXi.

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us

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mcowger
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The ovftool doesn't come with vCLI, but is available for windows, mac & linux from vmware:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/automationtools/ovf

For exporting VMDKs, you could modify the file browser scripts to grab them from the datastore, or look at William Lam's ghettoVCB scripts.

For vMotion, the script only works with a vMotion-enabled vCenter - no way to make it happen with raw ESXi.

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us
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EricTrentMiller
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wow...the ovftool is exactly what I was looking for.

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