One of things I thought you could do was import VMs from vSphere into vCloud Director. So far I’ve been using the “Export OVF Template” options on particular VMs.
Then I would follow through with an upload into the catalog of the exported .OVF file. I still think that’s a useful
method especially for folks who need ultimate portablity of the VM from one environment to another. I turns out you can import directly from vSphere to vCloud Director – but I was wondering why I’d never seen the option. It turns out it all hangs on permissions and rights. An Organization Admin and Catalog Author can both create and add content to the catalog – but NOT directly from vSphere. To import a VM directly from vSphere into an Organizations Catalog you have to be a SysAdmin.
As you can see below the OrgAdmin doesn’t get the “vSphere” icon, but the SysAdmin of the vCD Cell does. In hindsight it makes logical sense. After all I don’t want my “tenents” being able to browse the vCenter environment. Additionally, given that the SysAdmin needs credentials to add vCenter the abillity to browse vCenter, and locate objects makes sense as well.
Click this little icon allows you to browse the vCenter environment – and add VM in. As with the copy/move feature which allows you to shuffle around items between catalogs the import VM option has similiar front-end – that allows you to select what Virtual Datacenter hosts the template, and on what storage it should be located – as well as marking the template as gold master or not.
