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• Citrix XenConvert 2.1 and higher
• XenServer OVF Appliance Wizard (this tool)
The XenServer OVF Appliance Wizard requires the following:
• To run the XenServer OVF Appliance Wizard, you must be logged in as root or have the Pool Administrator
Role Based Access Control (RBAC) role associated with your user account.
• DHCP has to be running on the management network XenServer is using.
• The XenServer OVF Appliance Wizard requires local storage on the server on which you are running it.
• When importing from non-XenServer sources, you may want to run the Operating System Fixups while
importing the appliance. For more information about Operating System Fixups, see the section called
“Operating System Fixups”.
Understanding OVF and OVA formats
Both OVF and OVA formats are appliance-package standards defined by the Distributed Management Task
Force (DMTF). However, the times when you would use them differ significantly. This topic provides an
overview of the OVF and OVA formats and why you would choose one over the other.
Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
OVF is an open standard for packaging and distributing software to be run in virtual machines. This standard
describes the metadata of one or more virtual machines. An OVF Package consists of a descriptor file (*.ovf)
and any other files representing the following attributes of the package:
• Signature. Digital signature used by a public key certificate in the X.509 format to authenticate the
producer of the package.
• Manifest. An SHA-1 digest of every file in the package to verify its contents by detecting any corruption.
• Virtual disks. Files comprising virtual disks in the format defined by the virtualization product that exported
the virtual disks. VMware products export a virtual disk in the Stream-Optimized VMDK format for an OVF
Package. XenServer products export a virtual disk in the Dynamic VHD format for an OVF Package.
Note:
A virtual disk can contain a Windows or Linux operating system.
However, it also supports other non-metadata related capabilities, such as encryption, compression,
archiving, EULA attachment, and annotations among other capabilities.
Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA)
An OVA package is a single archive file, in the Tape Archive (tar) format, containing the files that comprise
an OVF Package.
More information
For more information about OVF and OVA formats, see the following: