Here is the scenario: you have a VM that you want to transfer to another system over the Internet. The VM, in its entirety, is too big to transfer as is. So what do we do? Well, we could convert the .vmx into an .ova and then split it into a few manageable sizes for transport. Once on the distant end, we can easily put it all back together. Using the steps outlined here: https://communities.vmware.com/message/2244209, we can do this. Below are very generic steps to achieve this.
1. Convert the VM’s .vmx to ova in terminal
2. Use the ‘split’ commands to breakdown the ova into manageable sizes (I usually do mine in 550 MB (550000000 bytes)). In this case the command would be ‘split -b 550000000 your_vm.ova vm_brokedown
3. Transfer the smaller files to the destination
4. In terminal on the distant end, type cat vm_brokedown* > your_vm.ova
5. Import the ova into the Hypervisor of your choice.