An OVF is a collection of items in a single folder. Most commonly
this is a description file (.ovf) a manifest file (.mf), and virtual
machine state files (*.vhd or *.vmdk)
An OVA is a single file.
The OVA is the OVF folder contents all zipped into a single file. The
purpose of the OVA is when you want to take an OVF and share it, or give
it as a download. The OVA needs to be opened into the OVF before it can
be consumed.
--Matt
VCP, vExpert, Unix Geek, Storage Nerd
> The OVA needs to be opened into the OVF before it can be consumed.
For vSphere 5.1.0, I can directly deploy from an OVA file without any preprocessing into the OVF,
at least it works fine when I deployed the vCenter Server Appliance 5.1.0
(VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.1.0.5200-880472_OVF10.ova).
OVA is a tar archive containing the OVF package files. So if you run the tar command you might see something like this:
>tar xvf my.ova
my.ovf
my.mf
my.vmdk
The OVA format is supported by both vSphere and OVF Tool, both for import and export.