I created a virtual machine with that has a 4.7 GB virtual hard disk (.vmdk). I exported to .ova version 1.0 and got a 1.7 GB file which I was able to compress by another 200 mb using 7zip. So the 7zip archive with OVA is 1.5 GB.
7zipping the vm files directly gave me a file size of 1.1 GB. This is an ideal size and I'm wondering if anybody knows how to increase the compression of the ova file or manually create the ova file. I'm using virtual box but also have vmware. Here is the command I'm running on 7zip.
7z a -t7z vm.7z -m0=lzma2 -mx=9 -aoa vm.ova
I'm running the same command without vm.ova inside the vm folder to get the 1.1 GB file. My goals are smallest file size and easily useable in both vmware and virtualbox, import to qemu, hyper-v, and vshere is a plus.