OVF environment services by vCenter ?

[TronAr]

I've run into something that surprised me, showing my lack of knowledge about some services provided by vCenter.

Case in point, cisco has released a firewall virtual appliance (ASAv) which delivers as an OVA file.

The deployment of said OVA needs to be done using vCenter, apparently because vCenter deployment implements

some functionality (automation) that is not there when deploying directly to ESXi nor Workstation.

But what I was surprised at is that the VM has a way to interact with "leftovers" (environment) of the OVF deployment

in the form of a configuration XML file (neat, any pointers ?) and that that functionality is only available when the vCenter

is arround (i.e. live). I always thought that vCenter was primarily an infrastructure management piece, and not involved in

"end services" so to say.

Has anybody some info about how is this being done ?

Regards,

-Carlos

[grace27 · Accepted solution]

Hi

Welcome to communities.

please find details about OVF and yes , OVF deployment in the form of a configuration XML file

http://blogs.vmware.com/vapp/2009/07/selfconfiguration-and-the-ovf-environment.html

[TronAr]

Neat.

Are there more VM services that depend on vCenter ? That part I don't quite like.

As I said, I always though of vCenter like a management server. As such, services can go on even when vCenter

is not available. HA does not depend on vCenter to work, nor FT, or VSAN.

But OVF environment, if used by a VM, would create a dependency on vCenter. Are there more strings ?

-Carlos