Deploy OVF to ESXi

[Grzesiekk]

Hello, 

  i am not sure if this is the correct group(if that's the case , can moderator move it to correct one ?).

I am trying to make my own OVF for an appliance i am creating, i am trying to utilize the properties in vapp options. I have no problems with deploying the OVF to esxi via Virtual Center, everything works as expected. I can deploy VM via the import OVF,  user gets asked about some extra fields etc. VM gets booted up, then my script inside the VM, can use vmtoolsd to pull the required information that user has given during OVF deployment.

This behavior changes when i deploy OVF directly to ESXi. (is this even fully supported?)

One can reproduce this by: 

create VM , install os, vm tools, add 1/2/3 vapp options

deploy OVF to esxi

Result : one can login to VM os, run the vmtoolsd and query the submitted XML from vmware tools

#1 when user adds any device, or changes portgroup in the VM ( after ovf was deployed), then it's not possible to do the query with vmtoolsd.

#2 when one is deploying the OVF, and changes the portgroup while deploying(during the OVF wizzard) it then VM gets booted and from the start we can't puill any information using vmtoolsd.

So this looks like that if ESXi has to change the VM config, then the answer key/values/xml are lost. When i push with powercli for example the xml into the advanced setting of the VM later on, then changing the config of VM, does not impact viewing the xml with answers content using vmtoolsd. This workaround would be not acceptable for my case as it requires administrator to additionally run script after the deployment, so user can't handle this on his own.

Has anyone noticed the same behavior , maybe there is some workaround ?

Thank you,

Greg

[scott28tt]

I've reported your thread so a moderator should take a look at it's location within the forums.