Convert OVA to ISO

Process for extracting and converting of disk images from OVA virtual machines. Possible ova to iso conversion solutions.

How to convert .ova to .iso file

Everything points to the fact that users searching for ova to iso conversion are looking for a way to extract and/or convert disk images from OVA virtual machine and save these as ISO disk images. There is a fundamental difference between OVA and ISO formats that makes steps to directly convert ova to iso a bit complicated, but not impossible. Compared to ISOs, which are just disk images, OVA format is used to store all kinds of data for the virtual machine, including the disk image (in various formats), as well as configuration files (OVF), and other settings.

You can of course just launch the original virtual machine (OVA package) using VirtualBox, explore the contents of virtual drives and manually copy out the contents out to build ISO compilation. But sometimes you do not want to launch the machine with the settings saved in OVA files.

In some cases users are interested in making bootable ISO images from the OVA package, which is often the case for Linux users.

How to recover and convert disk images from OVA packages

Extracting OVA package

What you need to do, is to first extract the disk images from OVA package and export these to ISO format. OVA format is pretty much just renamed TAR archive, which means you can extract it using any suitable file archiver, such as 7-zip ro WinRAR. Once you do that, you will get a OVF folder that contains single .ovf file and any disk images that were part of the OVA package, typically in VMDK (VMWare) or VDI (VirtualBox) format.

Exploring VDI / VMDK images

Now comes the hardest part, making the actual ISO. It is not possible to do this directly, due the different nature of these disk images, but there is still a way to produce ISO image from the data. You have to use tool that can browse .vmdk or .vdi file, something like the shareware tool WinImage, or mount the disk images using QEMU, VirtualBox or VMWare.

Making ISO disk image

Once this is done, copy out any files you want for your ISO compilation and build it with a suitable software.

How to create bootable ISO from OVA files

The process of making bootable .iso image is similar to the data recovery, but it requires more refined approach and specific tools. There are probably several ways how to achieve ova to iso conversion this way, here is one example for many.

1. Extract the OVA Package with WinRAR or 7-ZIP, remember it's just renamed TAR archive. You are again looking for the disk images (VDI or VMDK).

2. Convert the Disk Image to ISO-Compatible Format, QEMU should be sufficient for this task.

  • You can this with the following command: qemu-img convert -O raw source.vmdk target.img

3. If you need the ISO to be bootable (e.g., for installing an OS), ensure that the original disk image from the OVA package is a bootable image with an OS installed. The bootability of the ISO depends on whether the original disk image was bootable (has proper content). Now you just need to create bootable disk image from the raw disk image data.

  • In Linux you can use the dd command to convert the raw disk image to ISO, i.e. dd if=target.img of=final.iso
  • In Windows, you can use any disk image utility or burning software that can create ISO disk images from raw disks.
QEMU icon

QEMU

A generic machine emulator and virtualizer

VirtualBox icon

VirtualBox

A multi-platform x86 virtualization software package

VMware Workstation icon

VMware Workstation

VMware Workstation is application used to create computer virtual machines in one hosting operating system

WinImage

A virtual disk managing application for Windows