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Import virtual machine
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Import virtual machine

Through the VMware Cloud Director® dashboard, you can download operating system images (ISOs) and virtual machine templates (.ova, .ovf) into content libraries. OS images and VM templates are stored in catalogs. You can share catalog data with other users or organizations within Cloud Director, or publish for external organizations to access.

You can upload files to an existing directory or create a new one.

In virtual data centers in cluster SILVER-1 has restrictions on importing your own ISO images of VMs. If there are problems with importing file a ticket and provide a link to the ISO image.

  1. Optional: create a directory.
  2. Load the virtual machine template into the directory.
  3. Download the OS image.

optional: create a directory⁠

  1. From control panel open the Cloud Director panel: VMware-based cloud → Cloud Director.
  2. Open the virtual data center page.
  3. Open the tab Libraries.
  4. Go to the section Content Libraries → Catalogs.
  5. Click New.
  6. Enter the name and description of the catalog.
  7. Optional: to select the storage policy, activate the toggle switch Pre-provision on specific storage policy and select a policy.
  8. Click OK. The new catalog will appear in the list of available catalogs.

Download the virtual machine template⁠

  1. From control panel open the Cloud Director panel: VMware-based cloud → Cloud Director.
  2. Open the virtual data center page.
  3. Open the tab Libraries.
  4. Go to the section Content Libraries → vApp Templates.
  5. Click NEW.
  6. In the section Select Source enter the URL of the file .ovf/.ova or download the file from your computer.
  7. Click Next.
  8. Enter a name and description for the template.
  9. Select the catalog to download.
  10. Click Next.
  11. On the menu. Catalog select the directory where you want to load the template.
  12. Click Finish. The download time depends on the size of the template being downloaded and the speed of your internet connection. The new template will appear in the Content Libraries → vApp Templates.

Download the OS image⁠

  1. From control panel open the Cloud Director panel: VMware-based cloud → Cloud Director.
  2. Open the virtual data center page.
  3. Open the tab Libraries.
  4. Go to the section Content Libraries → Media & Other.
  5. Click Add.
  6. On the menu. Catalog select the directory where you want to download the image.
  7. Select the ISO file to download.
  8. Field Name will be filled in automatically (it can be changed if necessary).
  9. Click OK. The download time depends on the size of the template being downloaded and the speed of your Internet connection. The new template will appear in the list of available templates in the following list Content Libraries → Media & Other.
  10. After installing the OS from the ISO, it is recommended to install the VMware Tools (Windows)/open-vm-tools (*nix) integration package.

Error when importing a template⁠

If when importing a VM template in the following format .ova task ends in an error, you can fix it in Cloud Director or with the VMware utility vcd-cli.

  1. Unzip the file with an OVA archiver (e.g. tar, 7zip). The extracted folder will contain VM template files in the following formats .ovf, .mf and .vmdk.
  2. Download the template. When performing step 6 in section Select Source download all files extracted when unpacking the archive .ova.