Importing OVF File From the Internet in VirtualCenter

I'm sure many of you have seen the announcement of the SearchMyVM from Vkernel.  I was intrigued by the product, so I signed up to download it.   They mentioned a direct link to the OVF file, so I poked around in Virtual Center and noticed the Virtual Appliance tab.   I had read about this function, but had no reason to actually use it in our VMware environment at prior to now.  Vkernel gave me a reason,  so I thought I would share the experience.

From this menu you can enter a url to directly download a OVF file from.  In this example I used http://downloads.vkernel.com/downloads/vkernel/ovf/VK_Search_1.0_Beta/VK_Search_1.0_Beta.ovf

Before continuing you have they show you how big the download will be, and how much disk space it will consume.

Once you have selected the name for the appliance, where you will store the files, and what network you will be using Virtual Center will grab the OVF file and import it 

Once this process is complete you have a virtual machine configured with the manufacturer recommended specifications with almost no effort.

I'm really impressed with this process.   Hopefully application vendors will embrace this format as the new way to deploy test machines.   If this is embraced widely in the consumer level virtualization products, this will be a boon for IT people studying for certification exams at home as well.  

I also wanted to mention a new member of the virtualization blogging family : Mark Bradley.  Not only is Mark a good friend of mine, and an expert consultant in the UK with a great technical mind especially when it comes to scripting.  I'm expecting some great stuff once he gets underway with the VI PowerShell Toolkit for VMware.  His site is http://www.ridethevirt.blogspot.com/