Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...

for packaging and distributing

virtual appliance A virtual appliance is a pre-configured virtual machine image, ready to run on a hypervisor; virtual appliances are a subset of the broader class of software appliances. Installation of a software appliance on a virtual machine and packaging that ...

s or, more generally,

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

to be run in

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

s. The standard describes an "open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of software to be run in

s". The OVF standard is not tied to any particular

hypervisor A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

instruction set architecture In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, ...

. The unit of packaging and distribution is a so-called ''OVF Package'' which may contain one or more ''virtual systems'' each of which can be deployed to a virtual machine.

History

In September 2007 VMware,

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

, HP,

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

and XenSource submitted to the

Distributed Management Task Force Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit industry standards organization that creates open manageability standards spanning diverse emerging and traditional IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, s ...

(DMTF) a proposal for OVF, then named "Open Virtual Machine Format". The DMTF subsequently released the OVF Specification V1.0.0 as a preliminary standard in September, 2008, and V1.1.0 in January, 2010. In January 2013, DMTF released the second version of the standard, OVF 2.0 which applies to emerging cloud use cases and provides important developments from OVF 1.0 including improved network configuration support and package encryption capabilities for safe delivery.

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...

has ratified OVF 1.1.0 as ANSI standard INCITS 469-2010. OVF 1.1 was adopted in August 2011 by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38 of the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...

(ISO) and the

International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; ) is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronics, electronic and related technologies. IEC standards cover a va ...

(IEC) as an International Standard ISO/IEC 17203. OVF 2.0 brings an enhanced set of capabilities to the packaging of virtual machines, making the standard applicable to a broader range of cloud use cases that are emerging as the industry enters the cloud era. The most significant improvements include support for network configuration along with the ability to encrypt the package to ensure safe delivery.

Design

An OVF package consists of several files placed in one directory. An OVF package always contains exactly one OVF descriptor (a file with extension .ovf). The OVF descriptor is an XML file which describes the packaged virtual machine; it contains the

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

for the OVF package, such as name, hardware requirements, references to the other files in the OVF package and human-readable descriptions. In addition to the OVF descriptor, the OVF package will typically contain one or more

disk image A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device. Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...

s, and optionally certificate files and other auxiliary files. The entire directory can be distributed as an Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) package, which is a tar archive file with the OVF directory inside.

Industry support

OVF has generally been broadly accepted. Several virtualization players in the industry have announced support for OVF.

References

External links

*
DMTF OVF Whitepaper

VMware OVF Whitepaper
{{ISO standards Computer standards DMTF standards ISO/IEC standards Open standards Virtualization

History

Design

Industry support

See also

References

External links