Open Virtualization Format

The Open Virtualization Format ( OVF ; German Open Virtualization Format ) is an open standard for virtual appliances or general software used in virtual machines running to package and distribute. This standard was developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).

The standard describes an "open, secure, portable, efficient and expandable format for the packaging and distribution of software that runs in virtual machines". The OVF standard is not restricted to specific hypervisors or processor architectures . The unit that takes place in packaging and distribution is called the OVF Package . An OVF package can contain one or more virtual systems , each of which can be imported into a virtual machine.

history

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A proposal for OVF, then called “Open Virtual Machine Format”, was submitted to the DMTF in September 2007 by Dell , HP , IBM , Microsoft , VMware and Citrix (XEN).

In September 2008 the DMTF published the OVF Specification V1.0.0 as a so-called “Preliminary Standard”. This is the latest version that is currently publicly available. This version still has to be brought through the usual DMTF process in order to become a “Final Standard”. This process includes that feedback from early implementations of the Preliminary Standard is incorporated into the final version.

Support in industry

In general, OVF was received positively. Several companies have announced their support for OVF. With Kensho and XenConvert 2, Citrix offers OVF support for the most popular variant of the free Xen hypervisor XenServer. The virtualization software VirtualBox supports the format from version 2.2. The open source virtualization platform Proxmox VE can import OVF files since version 5.0.

Web links

• DMTF OVF Specification V1.0.0 (preliminary standard) (PDF; 343 kB)
• DMTF OVF Technical Note (PDF; 303 kB)
• DMTF VMAN Initiative
• OVF Whitepaper (from the original OVF submission; PDF file; 183 kB)

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1. ↑ DMTF Press Release on OVF submission 9/2007 . Archived from the original on September 16, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 28, 2008. 
2. ↑ DMTF Published Documents page . Retrieved September 28, 2008.
3. ↑ techtarget.com article about OVF, 9/2008 . Retrieved September 28, 2008.
4. ↑ DMTF press release on VMAN Initiative, 9/2008 . Archived from the original on September 28, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 28, 2008. 
5. ↑ Fortisphere embraces OVF, 9/2008 . Retrieved September 28, 2008.
6. ↑ Citrix XenServer 5 is catching up with VMware, 12/2008 . Retrieved April 18, 2009.
7. ↑ VirtualBox Changelog, 4/2009 . Retrieved April 8, 2009.
8. ↑ Changelog entry for OVF support in Proxmox VEs package for managing virtual machines . Archived from the original on March 9, 2018. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 9, 2018.