VMware’s OVFtool is a command line tool that allows you to convert VMware Virtual Machines to Open Virtualization Format, or OVF. In the latest version, it can also upload VMs to vCloud Director for you as well!
To do this, OVFtool simply requires a source (VMX or OVF), and a destination (a vCloud Locator).
The vCloud locator looks something like this:
vcloud://username:password@host:port?org=name_of_org&vapp=name_of_deployed_vapp&catalog=name_of_catalog&vappTemplate=name_of_vapp_template_in_catalog&vdc=name_of_vdc
As you can see, the vCloud Locator is a URL with all of the information needed to upload your OVF.
Because OVFtool is run from the command line, the simple choice when using Windows is to use the command prompt. Using the Windows command prompt, however, results in errors when uploading to vCloud Director:
ovftool error
This is most likely because of the special characters ovftool uses in the URL (&, :, ?, @). If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the ampersand.
I tried quoting out the vCloud Locator several different ways to get it to understand, but resorted to Powershell to save the day once again.
$vCloudLocator = "vcloud://jake:password@vcloud.example.com:443?org=jake&vappTemplate=MyTemplate&catalog=private" $sourceFile = "C:\jake\MyVM.vmx" $ovftool = "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool\ovftool.exe" & $ovftool $sourceFile $vCloudLocator
Powershell treats the characters are part of the string, so we just simply pass the string as a parameter to OVFtool.
Hope this saves someone a headache! 
For more OVFtool fun, check out my post on using OVF tool with PowerCLI with your vSphere session!
March 3rd, 2013 at 3:10 pm
Following my tweets regarding setting VMX options such as pciHole.start as an org-admin, I was wondering if I upload a VMX with these ExtraConfig will this get through?
Thanks again,
Michael
March 3rd, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Unfortunately you can only upload a VM in OVF, not VMX. The only way to accomplish this in the public cloud is for a provider to make the changes.
March 3rd, 2013 at 6:21 pm
Gotcha… Thanks.
One of the provider suggested I’ll use “vCloud Connector” – will give it a try though its far too complex for what I wanted to do…
March 3rd, 2013 at 6:23 pm
Don’t waste your time. It’s not going to work.
vCloud connector converts to OVF during the transfer process.
March 4th, 2013 at 1:57 am
Glad I asked before I spent so much time setting up the vCloud Connector…
Thank you very much.
March 4th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
In Windows, & is used for additional commands. You must use ^ to escape the &.
vcloud://username:password@host:port?org=name_of_org^&vapp=name_of_deployed_vapp^&catalog=name_of_catalog^&vappTemplate=name_of_vapp_template_in_catalog^&vdc=name_of_vdc
But then I kept running into this.
Error: cURL error: Couldn’t connect to server
Completed with errors
I’ll stick with powershell too