when GUI export fails...

…you have to get back to good old CLI. i’m trying to export VM from very remote VMware vSphere 5.1 to OVA. unfortunately, packing 40GB is not apparently easy, as the whole process fails at different stages with error called by VMware simply timeout (yeah, kudos for brevity).

so you have to enable SSH and then copy whole directory with SCP. for optimal transfer from remote location it make sense to use additional parameters: -C and -o CompressionLevel=9 to get locally fully functional and packed OVA: scp -C -o CompressionLevel=9 xyz@zdalne_IP:/vmfs/volumes/very-long-uuid-string/vm_name/\* .