ovftop

README

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A terminal UI for deploying and managing OVF/OVA virtual machines on VMware ESXi and vCenter.

Midnight-Commander-style dashboard · guided deploy wizard · one-key clone & export · zero config server required

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Why OVFTOP

Deploying an OVF/OVA to ESXi or vCenter usually means one of two things: clicking through the vSphere web client's import wizard for the hundredth time, or hand-assembling an ovftool command line and hoping you remembered every --net: and --prop: flag correctly.

OVFTOP is a fast, keyboard-driven terminal UI that sits on top of VMware's own ovftool. It gives you a live, browsable inventory of your host or vCenter, a guided step-by-step deploy wizard that builds the ovftool invocation for you (and lets you review it before anything runs), and one-key clone/export for VMs and templates — all without leaving the terminal, and without standing up any kind of server or agent.

If you've used htop, btop, k9s, or lazygit, you already know how to drive this.

Features

• Live infrastructure tree — datacenters, clusters, hosts, VMs, templates, datastores, networks, and resource pools, in a collapsible Midnight-Commander-style tree with live CPU/memory/datastore usage gauges.
• Guided deploy wizard — a 7-step flow (Source → Metadata → Settings → Network → Advanced → Summary → Deploy) that reads the OVF's own descriptor to prompt for exactly the properties and network mappings it declares, then shows you the full ovftool command before it runs.
• Deploy from a local file or a URL — point it at a local .ovf/.ova, or give it a download URL and it fetches the file for you first.
• One-key clone (F5) — clone a selected VM or template to a new VM without opening a wizard.
• One-key export (F6) — export a selected VM/template back out to a .ova file, with live progress.
• Live deploy/export progress — streamed ovftool output with a progress bar, not just a spinner.
• Both ESXi and vCenter — works against a standalone ESXi host or a full vCenter inventory.
• Saved connection profiles — with credentials encrypted at rest (AES-GCM, scrypt-derived key); see Credential storage.
• Auto-refresh — the dashboard re-polls inventory on a configurable interval (off / 1 / 2 / 5 / 10 minutes) so long sessions stay in sync.
• Four built-in themes — Dark, Light, Dracula, Nord — cycle with one keypress from Settings.
• Built-in help & activity log — every keybinding is one F1 away; every connect/deploy/error is logged and viewable in-app (F8).

Screens at a glance

Screen	Key	What it does
Dashboard	—	Infrastructure tree + details panel + live usage gauges
Deploy wizard	F4	Guided OVF/OVA import, source → summary → live progress
Clone	F5	Clone the selected VM/template to a new name
Export	F6	Export the selected VM/template to a .ova
Settings	F7	Theme, auto-refresh interval, config/log paths
Logs	F8	Scrollable view of the app's own activity log
Menu	F9	Discoverable list of the actions above, plus About
Help	F1	Full keybinding reference

Requirements

• VMware's official ovftool, installed separately and on your PATH. OVFTOP drives ovftool; it doesn't replace it, bundle it, or reimplement OVF parsing. Download it from VMware/Broadcom's support portal (free registration required) and install it for your OS.

  Why isn't this in the repo? ovftool is proprietary software under VMware's own EULA — this project can't legally redistribute it. install.sh in this repo is a convenience script that installs your own downloaded copy on Linux; it doesn't fetch it for you.

• Network access to the ESXi host or vCenter Server you want to manage, plus an account with permission to import/export/clone VMs there.

• Linux, macOS, or Windows. A terminal with reasonable Unicode/emoji support looks best (the tree and status bar use icons as status indicators), but everything is still fully legible without it.

Installation

Download a prebuilt binary (recommended)

Grab the archive for your OS/arch from the latest release, extract it, and put the ovftop binary on your PATH:

# Linux (amd64) example — swap in your OS/arch
curl -L https://github.com/mousavi-azure/ovftop/releases/latest/download/ovftop_<version>_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo install -m 0755 ovftop /usr/local/bin/ovftop

Build from source

Requires Go 1.24+.

go install github.com/mousavi-azure/ovftop/cmd/ovftop@latest

or clone and build locally:

git clone https://github.com/mousavi-azure/ovftop.git
cd ovftop
go build -o ovftop ./cmd/ovftop

Install ovftool

# Linux, using this repo's helper against your own downloaded copy
sudo ./install.sh /path/to/VMware-ovftool-<version>-lin.x86_64.zip

On macOS/Windows, run VMware's own installer for ovftool.

Quick start

ovftop

1. On first run you'll land on the connect screen — press n to add a connection profile (ESXi host or vCenter Server, hostname, credentials).
2. On connect, OVFTOP discovers the full inventory and drops you on the dashboard.
3. Navigate the tree with ↑/↓, expand/collapse with Enter/Space.
4. Press F4 to deploy an OVF/OVA, F5 to clone a selected VM/template, F6 to export one, F1 any time for the full keybinding reference.

Configuration & credential storage

OVFTOP stores its config, log, and encrypted credential vault in your OS's standard per-user config directory (e.g. ~/.config/ovftop on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/ovftop on macOS):

File	Contents
config.yaml	Saved connection profiles (no secrets)
vault.enc	AES-GCM–encrypted saved passwords
vault.key / vault.salt	Local key material for the vault (0600 permissions)
ovftop.log	Recent activity log, viewable in-app via F8

By default the vault's encryption key is a random 32-byte key generated once and stored locally with 0600 permissions — this protects against casual copying of the config directory, not against another process running as the same OS user. If you'd rather derive the key from a passphrase you supply on every launch instead, set:

export OVFTOP_MASTER_PASSWORD="your passphrase"

Building a release locally

Releases are built with GoReleaser from .goreleaser.yaml. To build all platform archives locally without publishing:

goreleaser release --snapshot --clean

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome. Before opening a PR:

go build ./...
go vet ./...
go test ./...
gofmt -l .   # should print nothing

Acknowledgements

Built with Bubble Tea, Lip Gloss, and Bubbles from Charm, govmomi for the vSphere API client, and Cobra for the CLI shell. Drives — but does not include — VMware's official ovftool.

License

MIT © 2026 Mostafa Mousavi — mousavi.dev

"OVF Tool" and "vSphere" are trademarks of VMware/Broadcom. This is an independent, unaffiliated project.