> > [AB]: Unfortunately I could not find any way to perform this rather than
> > accomodating it inside libvirt. As mentioned more of the issue is: OVA
> > installation is handled by hypervisor in more than one step, they do not
> > expose specific APIs to load compressed disk associated with one VM, please
> > correct me if my understanding is wrong here. It means then this feature
> > could be blessed within libvirt framework at all :(.
> >
> > For educational purpose, I want to ask why is "OVA installtion" is
> > considered so alien. To me it is one of the ways to manage VM distribution
> > in an hypervisor agnostic way.
> >
>
> Point me to an OVA that's available and a way to load it & run it
> without forking money over to VMWare and I'll take a look and provide
> suggestions on how to best implement this for you.
>
> --
> Doug Goldstein

Please find a tiny OVA attached along with this mail, I wanted to share Microcore linux package but as size was 6.7 MB, mail was rejected by libvirt server (Mircrocore linux). ESX hypervisor comes in a free version and also it provides a web tool to access it (vSphere Client again free download), this tool allows to spit out OVA/OVF for installed VMs (installation can be done using free CD installations). OVAs can be generated using API calls as well.
 
Steps using vSphere Client:
1. Create a new VM giving path to OVA file.
2. Select VM params such as: name, virtual hardware details (memory, CPU, datastore, networking etc.).
3. Installation creates VMs, imports vdisks from OVA and gives a functional VM at the end.
 
Steps using vSphere API (libvirt way to do it):
1. ParseOVFDescriptor (this involves calling vSphere API with OVF descriptor stored in OVA).
2. InstallvAPP: this is responsible to create domain on the hypervisor and once it is done it returns a lease object (HttpLeaseObject). This object is to be used to upload the compressed virtual disk to the ESX hypervisor.
 
Working with it I did not feel there is a need to get any license or pay VMWare in one way or the other, one can create OVAs easily and export it to different hypervisors as VM distros. Further, marketplace may provide free OVA downloads :-).
 
Thanks!
Ata