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<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="ovf-import-appliance">
  <title>Importing an Appliance in OVF Format</title>
  
  <body>
    <p>The following steps show how to import one or more VMs from OVF format.</p>
    <ol>
      <li>
        <p>In <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/vbox-mgr"/>, click <uicontrol>Home</uicontrol>, and then click <uicontrol>Import</uicontrol>. Choose the file you want to import.</p>
        <p>Alternatively, double-click the OVF or OVA file in your file manager. <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> creates file type associations automatically for any OVF and OVA files on your host OS.</p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <p>In <uicontrol>Appliance Settings</uicontrol>, check the VMs described in the OVF or OVA file and change any of the VM settings you need to.</p>
      </li>
      <li>
        <p>By default, membership of VM groups is preserved on import for VMs that were initially exported from <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/>. You can change this behavior by using the <b outputclass="bold">Primary Group</b> setting for the VM.</p>
        <p>The following global settings apply to all of the VMs that you import:</p>
        <ul>
          <li>
            <p><b outputclass="bold">Base Folder:</b> Specifies the directory on the host in which to store the imported VMs.</p>
            <p>If an appliance has multiple VMs, you can specify a different directory for each VM by editing the <b outputclass="bold">Base Folder</b> setting for the VM.</p>
          </li>
          <li>
            <p><b outputclass="bold">MAC Address Policy:</b> Reinitializes the MAC addresses of network cards in your VMs prior to import, by default. You can override the default behavior and preserve the MAC addresses on import.</p>
          </li>
          <li>
            <p><b outputclass="bold">Import Hard Drives as VDI:</b> Imports hard drives in the VDI format rather than in the default VMDK format.</p>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li>
        <p>Click <b outputclass="bold">Finish</b> to import the appliance.</p>
        <p><ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> copies the disk images and creates local VMs with the
          settings described on the <b outputclass="bold">Appliance Settings</b> page. The imported VMs are shown in the
          list of VMs in VirtualBox Manager. </p>
        <p>Because disk images are large, the VMDK images that are included with virtual appliances are shipped in a
          compressed format that cannot be used directly by VMs. So, the images are first unpacked and copied, which
          might take several minutes. </p>
      </li>
    </ol>
    <p>You can use the <userinput>VBoxManage import</userinput> command to import an appliance. See <xref href="../cli_topics/vboxmanage-import.dita"/>.</p>
  </body>
  
</topic>
