Virtual appliances contain of a set of preconfigured virtual machines, or a single preconfigured virtual machine, that you can use to create new virtual machines. Typically, a virtual appliance contains the following:
An operating system.
Pre installed and pre configured applications.
Virtual appliances can be created as a set of .ovf (Open Virtualization Format) and .img (disk image) files, or can be packaged as a single .ova (Open Virtualization Format Archive) file. Disk image files can be different formats such as VMDK, VHD, VDI in addition to raw disk images. After the virtual appliances are imported, the disk images are converted into raw disk images used by Oracle VM templates and virtual machines.
The first step in using a virtual appliance is to import it into a repository. You can then use the virtual appliance to rapidly deploy preconfigured virtual machines on to Oracle VM Server. You can then start deploying virtual machines from the virtual appliance.
For ease of use, you should use a single .ova file when working with virtual appliances in Oracle VM. You can also use the .ovf format with the associated disk image files, but you must import all the disk files individually as virtual disks, then import the .ovf file as a virtual appliance.
A virtual appliance can contain a virtual machine from another virtualization software vendor, such as VMware. This enables you to import virtual machines from other virtualization software providers. However, you must make sure that the virtual machine that you want to import is correctly saved or created using the OVF standards and all files are saved in a virtual appliance file using the OVF archive file format.
OVF files in the version 0.9 format, as used by VMware ESX 3.5, are not supported. If the virtual appliance that you wish to import uses an unsupported format, you can try to use VMware's Converter or OVF Tool to convert to a newer version or you can use qemu-img to convert the vmdk files to raw disk files and recreate the virtual machine manually.
To display the virtual machines that use a particular virtual appliance, select the virtual appliance in the management pane and expand the table row. Note that you might need to refresh the virtual appliance to view the content of the virtual appliance. Refresh operations on the repository do not automatically refresh the content of the virtual appliance.
You can obtain or create a virtual appliance by:
Downloading an Oracle VM virtual appliance in .ova or .ovf format from the Oracle Technology Network, and importing it into Oracle VM Manager.
Exporting an existing virtual machine as a virtual appliance in Oracle VM Manager. See Section 4.7.2, “Exporting Virtual Machines to Virtual Appliances” for more information.
Before you can use a virtual appliance, you must import it into Oracle VM Manager and make it available to your server pool(s). Virtual appliances are stored in the server pool's storage repository by importing them from a web server into Oracle VM Manager. Oracle VM Manager then unpacks the virtual appliances on disk so that you can work with them.
Oracle VM Manager supports the import of OVF 1.1 and OVF 2.0 formatted files.
To import a virtual appliance, see Import Virtual Appliance in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.
You can export one virtual machine or multiple virtual machines to a virtual appliance. Exporting a virtual machine to a virtual appliance creates an OVA file in the storage repository. The OVA file contains the virtual disk file(s) in VMDK format, an OVF file that holds the virtual machine(s) configuration, and other files such as a manifest and certificate.
If you export multiple virtual machines as a virtual appliance, and the virtual machines share virtual disks, Oracle VM Manager copies the virtual disks during the export process but does not maintain the shared attribute between virtual disks. As a result, if you subsequently deploy virtual machines from the virtual appliance, you must then configure the virtual machines to share virtual disks.
Oracle VM does not support exporting ISO files to virtual appliances. If you want to export a virtual machine that has an attached ISO file, you can export the virtual machine as a virtual appliance and then separately export the ISO file from the repository.
After you export a virtual machine to a virtual appliance, you can then distribute the virtual appliance for import into another virtualization platform.
Oracle VM Manager is capable of exporting appliances in OVF 1.1 format only, using the stream-optimized Virtual Disk (VMDK) format specification. These files are compatible with Oracle VirtualBox.
To export a virtual machine to a virtual appliance, see Export to Virtual Appliance in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.
You cannot export a virtual machine template as a virtual appliance directly within Oracle VM Manager. If you wish to convert a template to a virtual appliance, you must first import it into Oracle VM Manager as a virtual machine and then export it as a virtual appliance.
Virtual appliances contain one or more virtual machines that you can quickly deploy into Oracle VM Manager.
If you export multiple virtual machines as a virtual appliance, and the virtual machines share virtual disks, Oracle VM Manager copies the virtual disks during the export process but does not maintain the shared attribute between virtual disks. As a result, if you subsequently deploy virtual machines from the virtual appliance, you must then configure the virtual machines to share virtual disks.
To create a virtual machine from a virtual appliance, see Virtual Appliances Item in the Oracle VM Manager User's Guide.