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Quick Tip - Useful ovftool debugging options

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This morning I needed perform several OVF uploads using ovftool and provide that information to engineering to investigate some performance issues. I tend to error on the side of providing more information than requested. The ovftool provides some really useful debugging options that are really handy in these situations but are un-documented. I can never seem to remember the exact syntax and hence I am documenting them here. I will also file a documentation bug to ensure these get added 🙂

UPDATE (08/19/13) - Thanks to one of the OVF engineers, it turns out you can see all the debug options and their definitions by running ovftool --help debug

The two options that I am referring to are:

--X:logFile=
--X:logLevel=

The first option allows you to log the entire ovftool session to a file which you can then send off to someone and the second option allows you to control the verbosity of the logs which I normally set to use verbose.

Here is an example of how you would use these ovftool options:

/Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool/ovftool --X:logFile=upload.log --X:logLevel=verbose -ds=mini-local-datastore-2 '--net:Network 1=VM Network' VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.1.0.10200-1235310_OVF10.ova vi://root@mini

Once the ovftool has completed its operation, you can take a look at the log and you will see quite a bit of information including some additional ovftool options that can be specified on the command-line which start with /X:

--> /X:httpTimeout = "0"
--> /X:imageReadSize = "262144"
--> /X:logFile = "upload.log"
--> /X:logLevel = "verbose"
--> /X:maxNumberOfTermSignals = "5"
--> /X:maxRedirects = "256"
--> /X:maximalDeltaConfSize = "8"
--> /X:maximalDeltaTreeSize = "6"
--> /X:progressSmoothing = "60"
--> /X:useMacNaming = "true"
--> /X:vCloudEnableGuestCustomization = "false"
--> /X:vCloudKeepTemplate = "true"
--> /X:vCloudTimeout = "3600"
--> /X:vimSessionTimeout = "600"

Note: I would not recommend tweaking the other options as the defaults should be sufficient, but logging to a file or upping the verbosity can be useful for troubleshooting

Lossless OVF Export in vSphere 5.1 & vCloud Director 5.1

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Did you know in vSphere 5.1, the new vSphere Web Client now provides a lossless OVF export feature for virtual machines? Previous to this, when you exported a virtual machine only the basic configurations were captured to ensure the virtual machine could be re-imported into another environment that supports OVF. The virtual machine's "virtual hardware personality" such as the BIOS UUID, MAC addresses, VMware specific advanced settings (Extra Configurations), boot order, PCI slot numbers, etc. were not captured as part of the export.

One of the main reasons for doing this is to ensure greater portability of the virtual machine across different environments. By having some of these specific properties tied to the virtual machine, it could limit where a virtual machine could be imported to. However, if you wish to preserve some of these settings during an export, you now have a new advanced option in vSphere 5.1 to specify additional configurations to capture for an OVF export.

When you select the "Enable advanced options" box, you will be provided with a list of configurations that you can preserve and export with the virtual machine.

Note: As the warning message states, only enable the configurations that you absolutely need, else you should stick to the defaults to ensure you have the best portability for your virtual machine export.

There is also a similar feature in vCloud Director 5.1 for vAppTemplates. When you initiate a download of a vAppTemplate, you now have an additional check box to "Preserve identity information" of the vAppTemplate prior to export. This is just a single check box for vCloud Director, you can not specify which configurations you want to preserve.

All these new OVF features can also be accessed with the latest ovftool 3.0.1 release which includes several new enhancements as well as support for both vSphere 5.1 and vCloud Director 5.1. You can find more details in the ovftool 3.0.1 user guide, but here is a summary of what's new in this release.

What Is New in OVF Tool 3.0.1

  • Support for vSphere 5.1 and 5.0.  
  • Support for vCloud Director 5.1, 1.5, and partial support for vCloud Director 1.0
  •    The following new ovftool options: --annotation, --exportFlags, --shaAlgorithm, --sourcePEM, --targetPEM, --vCloudTemplate, --sourceSSLThumbprint, --targetSSLThumbprint, --fencedMode, --noSSLVerify, --vService.

Feature Highlights

  • Full support for vCloud Director 1.5 and 5.1
  • Includes full OVF 1.0, and 1.1 support and backward-compatible mode for importing existing OVF 0.9 packages
  • Supports both import and generation of OVA packages (OVA is part of the OVF standard, and contains all the files of a virtual machine or vApp in a single file.)
  • Directly converts between any vSphere, vCloud Director, VMX, or OVF source format to any vSphere, vCloud Director, VMX, or OVF target format
  • Accesses OVF sources using HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP, or from a local file 
  • Deploys and exports vApp configurations on vSphere 4.0 targets and later and on vCloud Director 1.5 targets and later
  • Provides options to power on a VM or vApp after deployment, and to power off a virtual machine or vApp before exporting (caution advised)
  • Show information about the content of any source in probe mode
  • Provides context sensitive error messages for vSphere and vCloud Director sources andtargets, showing possible completions for common errors, such as an incomplete vCenter inventory path or missing datastore and network mappings
  • Provides an optional output format to support scripting when another program calls OVFTool
  • Uses new optimized upload and download API (optimized for vSphere 4.0 and later)
  • Signs OVF packages and validates OVF package signatures
  • Validates XML Schema of OVF 1.0 and OVF 1.1 descriptors
  • Import and export of OVF packages into a vApprun1.0 workspace. For more information about vApprun, see http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vapprun.

How to Copy VMs Directly Between ESXi Hosts Without Shared Storage

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There were some discussions earlier this week about copying Virtual Machines from one ESXi host to another ESXi host that reminded me of a very cool feature in the ovftool that could help with this task(which I thought I had written about already). As you probably have guessed by now, I am a big fan of the ovftool and have written several articles here, here and here. It still surprises me with the amount of features this little utility contains and this particular one is definitely a cool one!

If you have ever needed to copy a Virtual Machine from one host to another, it can be a challenge sometimes, especially if you do not have shared storage. You can of course leverage tools like VMware Converter or exporting the VM to a "middle man" system and then re-importing that VM into the destination host but it could take awhile or you have to run a Windows system. Well, if you are looking for a quick and easy way to copy a VM from one host to another, try using the ovftool.

In this example, I have two ESXi hosts called vESXi-03 and vESXi-04 and they both contain a single local datastore (no shared storage). I have a VM called vMA5 that is located on vESXi-03 and I would like to copy that directly to vESXi-04 without needing any additional storage.

Here is an example of using ovftool to probe the ESXi host to see the list of available VMs:

Note: A VM must be powered off for ovftool to transfered or exported.

Now that we have identified our VM, we just need to specify the source ESXi host and the destination ESXi host as well as the datastore using the -ds option. Here is an example of using ovftool to export the VM from one ESXi host to another ESXi host:

There are also other options that you can specify such as the network configuration and power options, please refer to the ovftool documentation for more details.

If you open up a vSphere Client connection to each of your ESXi hosts, you will see that the source host will have an export task and the destination host will have an import task as shown in the screenshot below:

Pretty nifty huh? 🙂

If anyone is interested in how this works, the system that is running ovftool acts as a proxy between your source and destination. The system running ovftool IS in the data path during the transfer but its only for the data to stream from source->client->destination. Nothing is stored on the client system and you do not need to have the storage capacity of what you are transferring. This is very nifty little feature that many people are not aware of with ovftool.