This issue was originally opened by @orcutt989 as hashicorp/packer#9228. It was migrated here as a result of the Packer plugin split. The original body of the issue is below.

Feature Description

Take an OVA artifact form vmware-iso or from anywhere else and use it to provision a machine with the vmware-vmx builder.

"source_path": "vmx or ova file path"

Use Case(s)

OVA is smaller than VMX format and would take up less space on the datastore. Vcenter/esx both have functionality to import OVA let's extend this to Packer.