What is a .OVF file?
OVF describes a virtual machine in a portable, vendor-neutral way.
- Did you know
- OVF, standardised in 2009, lets a virtual machine move between VMware, VirtualBox and others.
- OVF was proposed to the DMTF in 2007 by VMware, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft and XenSource before becoming a standard.
- An OVF package centres on an XML descriptor that lists the machine’s hardware, disks and settings in a vendor-neutral way.
- What Analyser reads
- Inspect virtual-machine descriptors (VMware .vmx, VirtualBox .vbox, OVF/OVA), disc images (Nero .nrg, Alcohol .mds/.mdf, CloneCD), embedded firmware (Intel HEX, Motorola S-record, UF2, ELF/AXF, Device Tree Blobs, U-Boot uImage), partition tables (MBR/GPT with GUIDs), Linux filesystem superblocks (ext2/3/4, SquashFS, cramfs, romfs) and Windows imaging (WIM/ESD) - reading headers directly, no upload.
- Depth of analysis
- .OVF is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .OVF file
- Drag a .OVF file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.