How to identify a vCenter locator in vSphere?

Question

When deploying an OVA/OVF file to vCenter, ovftool requires a locator.

The example locator in the user guide looks like this: vi://user@localhost/Datacenter

When I look at the vCenter path with vSphere, the hierarchy we have set up is:

    - Location
    -- Department with Spaces
    --- security_group

Perhaps my assumption that this hierarchy is the locator is incorrect, because vi://user@localhost/Location/Department\ with\ Spaces/security_group just returns Error: Cannot parse VI locator.

Is there a way in vSphere to determine the correct locator of a vcenter for an ovftool deployment?

Answer 1

If you are specifying the --datastore, you'll want to use the ovftool auto-complete to suggest your path. So in my case, I used vi://user:password@localhost/Location/host to identify both the vCenter locator and the datastore. When you reach the end of the autocompletion, you have your datastore value "Datastores found on target:", and the path prior is your locator.