Support for the full OVF Specification

[Connoissyrup]

I've been using VirtualBox off and on since version 3 or 4 and have wondered why it doesn't fully support the OVF specification. I don't have any specific issues importing VMs, however, virtual appliances that leverage "Property" definitions within the "ProductSection" of the OVF file are completely ignored by VirtualBox and it doesn't make sense. This reduces portability and makes pre-deployment customization of virtual appliances impossible when using VirtualBox. The latest version of this spec is more than 10 years old and is supported by both KVM and VMware, why has VirtualBox never adopted support for these custom properties? Or am I just doing something wrong?

[LewLuettgen]

I've been using VirtualBox off and on since version 3 or 4 and have wondered why it doesn't fully support the OVF specification. I don't have any specific issues importing VMs, however, virtual appliances that leverage "Property" definitions within the "ProductSection" of the OVF file are completely ignored by VirtualBox and it doesn't make sense. This reduces portability and makes pre-deployment customization of virtual appliances impossible when using VirtualBox. The latest version of this spec is more than 10 years old and is supported by both KVM and VMware, why has VirtualBox never adopted support for these custom properties? Or am I just doing something wrong?

You're not doing anything wrong, it's just that VirtualBox doesn't currently fully support the OVF spec. You can use other virtualization software, such as VMware or KVM, to import and customize those devices, or manually edit the OVF files and disk images to make them compatible with VirtualBox.