A virtual machine template contains various components such as the virtual machine configuration information, virtual disks that contain the operating system and any application software. These components are packaged together as an Oracle VM template file. An assembly is similar to a virtual machine template, but in the open standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF) format. Older Oracle VM template files were packaged as Oracle VM template files, and the more recent templates are packaged in OVF format as assemblies. If the template you are importing uses the OVF format, see Section 4.7, “How are Assemblies Managed?” for information on importing an assembly and creating a template from the assembly.

Before you can use a virtual machine template, you must import it into Oracle VM Manager and make it available to your server pool(s). Virtual machine templates are stored in the server pool's storage repository by importing them from a web server into Oracle VM Manager.

In a storage repository, templates are typically imported as an archive (.tgz, .tar or other). The archive contains a virtual machine configuration file (.cfg) file, and at least one virtual disk image (.img file).

On disk, a template archive is unpacked after import. The .cfg file of the virtual machine is always referenced from the Templates folder, but the virtual disk image files (.img) are placed in the VirtualDisks folder. This makes the creation of virtual machines from template a lot faster, which also applies to cloning of virtual machines.

If you downloaded an Oracle VM template from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud which contains an template.tgz file, you should import it as a template. This format of a template is the older format used by Oracle to publish Oracle VM templates.

For information on importing a virtual machine template, see Import Template in theOracle VM Manager User's Guide.