Using ovftool to deploy an OVF with references to external files does not seem to work...

Hi,

I have an OVF file that refeneces a disk image from a webserver, e.g.:

<File ovf:href="http://myserver/cdrom.iso" ovf:id="file1"/>

When i try to deploy this OVF to a vSphere server, it fails at the disk transfer stage... it looks to me like ovftool is treating it like a local file:

$ ovftool my.ovf vi://root:@172.26.0.172

Opening OVF source: my.ovf

Warning: No manifest file

Opening VI target: vi://root@172.26.0.172:443/

Deploying to VI: vi://root@172.26.0.172:443/

Disk Transfer Failed

Error: Failed to open file: cdrom.iso

Here is the output with logging enabled:

When an OVF is deployed from a local file, does it mean the references also need to be local? I had a quick read of the OVF spec and it seems like file reference can be anywhere... local, relative, http or https... any ideas?