Difference between OVA and OVF

[wdey]

Stupid question

What is the difference between OVA and OVF; I've seen identical files with this 2 extensions.

Is it related with virtual hardware versions (OVA- VM 7, OVF- VM 4).

[mcowger]

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

[rfc3261]

>  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).

[admin]

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.