Export virtual machine from ESX server to OVF file

Previously I have posted an article on how to upload an OVA file to an VMware ESX server.  I recently had a task doing the opposite.  Here is an example using ovftool to download a vm from ESX server and creating portable OVF to deploy on another VMware server.

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool --noImageFiles "vi://root:password@esxHostname/ha-datacenter?ds=[datastore1] JBOSS 5.0.1.GA/JBOSS 5.0.1.GA.vmx" C:\Users\Charles\Desktop\l1-server.ovf

I have underlined above what you will need to change for your environment.  You can determine where your .vmx file is by looking at the disk settings for your VM in vSphere: