Gents ,

Pls bear with me as this will be long post...

I plan to export a Whole DC consisting of some 90 + VM , each VM has it;s Own datastore ( Bad thing i know..will streamline it ) . the esx version ranges from Esx 2.5 to 3.0 to 3.5 to 4.0 and all the VM;s are in same Vcenter ver 2.xx. we need to Migrate these to Vsphere 4 . I plan to use OVF tool for the same. I am a bit concerned about 2.5 . how do i export them. where do i install OVF Tool ( on vcenter server ?? ) on windows hosts ??? ..Datastore on SAN storage .& are presented to ESX via HBA's . how do OVF tool See these Datastores on Windows Hosts ....

Will appreciate if some body can help. tried via documentation but it didnl't helped much..

Regards

Sushil

Greetings friends,

I have installed ovftool on a Linux machine with SLES 11 SP1 x86_64

I am currently experimenting on how to use ovftool, as i'm a total newbie considering it's use.

I currently have a vCenter Server 4.1, with IP 10.20.30.40. There i have the following structure:

10.20.30.40

     MyDataCenter

          Cluster1

          Cluster2

               MyVM

The datastore where the vmx is located is named NAS1

I want to convert this virtual machine to .ovf. But for starters, i would like to probe it. I'm using ovftool 2.1.0 and the user's guide says that the VMX type is supported. I thought to use vSphere Locator with Datastore (ds) query type. So, i execute the following:

ovftool vi://10.20.30.40/MyDataCenter?ds=[NAS1] MyVM/MyVM.vmx

After i'm asked for credentials, i get the following:

Please enter login information for source vi://10.20.30.40/
Username: xxxxxxx
Password: *************
Error: Curl error: Couldn't resolve host name
Completed with errors

Have you seen that before? Am i doing something wrong with the syntax? Or in general, am i using ovftool the wrong way?

Thank you for your help!

Peter

I recently had an issue where I exported a VM as an OVF using the vSphere client, a few weeks later I needed to import the VM back into our environment and after importing I received an "Error loading Operating System" error.  I have imported and exported countless VMs as OVF files, and this is very frustrating.  I also have VMs sent to me from Government entities and I always express how they should send them as an OVF file since it makes it very easy for me to import.  Recently I had 1 out of 3 errors after the import with the same "Error loading Operating System" message.

I have tried to change the HD controller on the VM, I also created a New VM with the "custom" option and I chose the exact OS and vHardware for the VM, and I tried to use the existing .vmdk files and that does not work.  I'm just wondering if there is some simple fix out there for what I thought was a simple import and export.

I'm using ESXi 4.1 Update 2 on HP BL hardware...oh, I also have VMware Workstation 8, and I can mount the vmdk files.

Hi All,

I have just come across ovftool and was giving a try to it. I am fairly new to VMware world.

I have a  .OVF which I exported using vSphere client 4.0. This .OVF comprises of 3 Suse Linux based virtual machines. i.e. I created a vApp on ESX (4.1) host, in this vApp I put my 3 SLES VMs and then exported it as OVF.

It has a total size of around 4.5GB.

Now I ran this command to compress this .OVF as well as gave an option to create deltadisks.

C:\> ovftool --compress=9 --makeDeltaDisks --skipManifestCheck  MyVMCluster\MyVMCluster.ovf   E:\

output:

{{{

The manifest does not validate
Generating delta disks for 2 disks (capacity 40960 MB)
Reading disks
Disk Transfer Completed

Determining optimal configuration for capacity group
Writing configuration to disk
Disk Transfer Completed

Completed successfully

}}}

Now when I checked my E:\ It had created a folder with the same name and put related files there. I saw a significant reduction in the new vmdk size. ( around 2.3GB now )

Now when I manually deploy this new ovf on vSphere client, it goes till certain %age and then flags an error:

{{{

Error uploading file to server ( E:\MyVMCluster\disk3.vmdk.gz ) Not a supported disk format ( Invalid sparse vmdk header )

}}}

and then it stops and everything rolledback.

Any pointers ?

Thanks

Nikunj

Hello all,

I am having a problem with the ovftool.

Here's what i did.

1)I created a VM running CentOS.

2)These are the 3 files that i got.

Test.vmx

Test.vmdk (Descriptor File)

# Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

CID=5046e880

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="vmfsPreallocated"

# Extent description

RW 83886080 VMFS "Test-flat.vmdk" 0

# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "83220"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

Test-flat.vmdk

3) This is the command that i ran

ovftool "Test.vmx" "Test_New.ova"

Please help!

Thank you

I'm trying to use ovftool to automate OVA deployments to vCloud Director 5.1. I have installed ovftool 3.0.1 on Ubuntu and tested out some operations. Everything seems to work except that I always get a segmentation fault when I invoke a vcloud target.

Here is the logging output:

2013-04-12T09:38:22.261-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] [SSL_DB] Using /home/evan/.ovftool.ssldb as SSL DB
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 2 (SIGINT)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 4 (SIGILL)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 6 (SIGABRT)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 8 (SIGFPE)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 15 (SIGTERM)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 1 (SIGHUP)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 3 (SIGQUIT)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 5 (SIGTRAP)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 9 (SIGKILL)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 13 (SIGPIPE)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] OvfTool Version: VMware ovftool 3.0.1 (build-801290)
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Using home directory: /home/evan/.ovftool
2013-04-12T09:38:22.263-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] OvfTool Environment:
--> /X:httpTimeout = "0"
--> /X:imageReadSize = "262144"
--> /X:logToConsole = "true"
--> /X:maxNumberOfTermSignals = "5"
--> /X:maxRedirects = "256"
--> /X:maximalDeltaConfSize = "8"
--> /X:maximalDeltaTreeSize = "6"
--> /X:progressSmoothing = "60"
--> /X:useMacNaming = "false"
--> /X:vCloudEnableGuestCustomization = "false"
--> /X:vCloudKeepTemplate = "true"
--> /X:vCloudTimeout = "3600"
--> /X:vimSessionTimeout = "600"
--> /authdPortSource = "902"
--> /authdPortTarget = "902"
--> /fencedMode = "bridged"
--> /prgPath = "/usr/lib/vmware-ovftool"
--> /source = "vcloud://vclouddirector.intapp.net/"
--> /vCloudTemplate = "false"
-->
2013-04-12T09:38:22.270-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Done initializing libs
2013-04-12T09:38:22.270-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Determining source
2013-04-12T09:38:22.270-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] Determining target
2013-04-12T09:38:22.302-07:00 [7F986BFFF700 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed
2013-04-12T09:38:22.617-07:00 [7F986BFFF700 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed
2013-04-12T09:38:22.617-07:00 [7F986BFFF700 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed
2013-04-12T09:38:22.617-07:00 [7F986BFFF700 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed
2013-04-12T09:38:22.617-07:00 [7F986BFFF700 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed
2013-04-12T09:38:22.617-07:00 [7F986BFFF700 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed
2013-04-12T09:38:22.617-07:00 [7F986BFFF700 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed
2013-04-12T09:38:22.619-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] VCloud request body:
-->
2013-04-12T09:38:22.641-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] VCloud response body:
--> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
--> <SupportedVersions xmlns="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/versions" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/versionshttp://vclouddirector/api/versions/schema/versions.xsd">
-->     <VersionInfo>
-->         <Version>1.5</Version>
-->         <LoginUrl>https://vclouddirector.intapp.net/api/sessions</LoginUrl>
   ... schema output snipped ...
-->
2013-04-12T09:38:22.648-07:00 [7F987B01E740 verbose 'Default'] VCloud version used: 5.1

The end of the strace output:

[pid 15407] munmap(0x7f8b32f7c000, 135168) = 0
[pid 15407] munmap(0x7f8b32f9d000, 135168) = 0
[pid 15407] munmap(0x7f8b3cadb000, 135168) = 0
[pid 15407] write(6, "\25\3\1\0\30B& 2\7\30\3259W0n~(4\216\375\"\35\310c\211{+\350", 29) = 29
[pid 15407] close(6)                    = 0
[pid 15407] brk(0x2c17000)              = 0x2c17000
[pid 15407] brk(0x2c38000)              = 0x2c38000
[pid 15407] write(1, "2013-04-12T09:40:54.198-07:00 [7"..., 882013-04-12T09:40:54.198-07:00 [7F8B3CB7F740 verbose 'Default'] VCloud version used: 5.1
) = 88
[pid 15407] --- SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) @ 0 (0) ---
Process 15404 resumed
Process 15407 detached
[pid 15410] +++ killed by SIGSEGV (core dumped) +++
[pid 15409] +++ killed by SIGSEGV (core dumped) +++
[pid 15408] +++ killed by SIGSEGV (core dumped) +++
[pid 15411] +++ killed by SIGSEGV (core dumped) +++
<... wait4 resumed> [{WIFSIGNALED(s) && WTERMSIG(s) == SIGSEGV && WCOREDUMP(s)}], 0, NULL) = 15407
write(2, "/usr/bin/ovftool: line 23: 15407"..., 91/usr/bin/ovftool: line 23: 15407 Segmentation fault      (core dumped) "$OVFTOOL_BIN" "$@"
) = 91
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0
--- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
wait4(-1, 0x7fff27453e98, WNOHANG, NULL) = -1 ECHILD (No child processes)
rt_sigreturn(0xffffffffffffffff)        = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {SIG_DFL, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f70fceb44a0}, {0x43f140, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f70fceb44a0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8)  = 0
read(255, "", 409)                      = 0
exit_group(139)                         = ?

I'm trying to import an OVA file with settable OVF properties for configuration (product key, network configuration) into vCloud with ovftool. It seems from the documentation that I should be using the --prop option to set these values, but they don't seem to get passed through vCloud to the deployed vApp, and the system gives an error about unconfigured properties when it tries to start up. I can go in the vCloud interface and manually enter them for my vApp, but I was hoping to automate the process with ovftool.

At first I thought the issue was that the properties where at the VM level instead of the vApp level, but changing the OVA in vSphere to move the properties to the vApp itself produces the same result. Using the same command to import the OVA directly into vSphere correctly sets the properties with either version.

Is setting of OVF properties for vCloud supported by ovftool? If so, what is the correct syntax?

Currently running:

ovftool -o --acceptAllEulas --prop:productkey="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX" --prop:ipaddress="10.146.3.1" --prop:netmask="255.255.0.0" --prop:gateway="10.146.1.254" vApp.ova vcloud://vclouddirector?org=IT&vdc=IT&catalog=IT&vapp=test1

Thanks.

I have a Linux VM running on fusion, and using ovftool to convert this .vmx into .ovf, then import into a ESXi 5...unfortunately having this error message.

I tried the -lax option, but doesn't help...I look into the ovf file, and found it could be this section issue

    <vmw:BootOrderSection vmw:instanceId="7" vmw:type="disk">

      <Info>Virtual hardware device boot order</Info>

    </vmw:BootOrderSection>

Anyone can share me some light to get around this...thanks

Hello There,

OvfTool: 3.0.1

vCloud Director(VCD): 5.1

I use ovftool 3.0.1 to upload an ovf file to VCD and the server return error after upload completely.

It works previously while use ovftool 2.1 with VCD 1.5

I use ovftool 3.0.1 command line to upload template like this:

ovftool --X:logFile=upload.log --machineOutput --powerOn --acceptAllEulas --ipAllocationPolicy=transientPolicy "--net:mynetwork01=mynetwork01" --name=test88t "/tmp/ova/vwin1/vwin1.ovf" "vcloud://xxx:xxx@mynetwork/?org=zhongnan&vappTemplate=test88t&vdc=zhongnan-ALLOC-02&catalog=ISO%20Library" | while read x ; do echo $x; done

The ovf uploaded to VCD is complete, however I got an error result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<InstantiateVAppTemplateParams name="test88t" deploy="false" powerOn="false" xmlns="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v1.5"

                               xmlns:ovf="http://schemas.dmtf.org/ovf/envelope/1">

  <InstantiationParams>

    <NetworkConfigSection>

      <ovf:Info>Configuration parameters for logical networks</ovf:Info>

      <NetworkConfig networkName="mynetwork">

        <Configuration>

          <ParentNetwork href="https://mynetwork/api/network/xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx"

                         type="application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.network+xml" name="mynetwork-01"/>

          <FenceMode>bridged</FenceMode>

          <AddressingMode>POOL</AddressingMode>

        </Configuration>

        <IsDeployed>true</IsDeployed>

      </NetworkConfig>

    </NetworkConfigSection>

  </InstantiationParams>

  <Source href="https://mynetwork/api/vAppTemplate/vappTemplate-aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd"/>

  <AllEULAsAccepted>true</AllEULAsAccepted>

</InstantiateVAppTemplateParams>

        2013-06-11T04:33:17.786-07:00 [7FA9BA208720 verbose 'Default'] VCloud response body:

        --> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

        --> <Error xmlns="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v1.5" minorErrorCode="BAD_REQUEST" message="Bad request

-->  - Unexpected JAXB Exception

-->  - cvc-complex-type.2.4.a: Invalid content was found starting with element 'AddressingMode'. One of '{&quot;http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v1.5":RetainNetInfoAcrossDeployments,

&quot;http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v1.5":Features, &quot;http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v1.5":d, &quot;http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v1.5":RouterInfo}' is expected."

                   majorErrorCode="400" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

                   xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v1.5http://sd1.aiscloud.net/api/v1.5/schema/master.xsd"></Error>

        -->

        2013-06-11T04:33:17.788-07:00 [7FA9BA208720 verbose 'Default'] Backtrace:

        --> backtrace[00] rip 00007fa9b42a0f44 Vmacore::System::Stacktrace::CaptureWork(unsigned int)

        --> backtrace[01] rip 00007fa9b406bca4 Vmacore::System::SystemFactoryImpl::CreateQuickBacktrace(Vmacore::Ref<Vmacore::System::Backtrace>&)

        --> backtrace[02] rip 00007fa9b4001ef8 Vmacore::Throwable::Throwable(std::string const&)

        --> backtrace[03] rip 000000000061e7c1 /usr/lib/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin() [0x61e7c1]

        --> backtrace[04] rip 000000000060fca8 /usr/lib/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin() [0x60fca8]

        --> backtrace[05] rip 000000000064eb65 /usr/lib/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin() [0x64eb65]

        --> backtrace[06] rip 000000000064fd7a /usr/lib/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin() [0x64fd7a]

        --> backtrace[07] rip 0000000000569c84 /usr/lib/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin() [0x569c84]

        --> backtrace[08] rip 00000000004c4b6e /usr/lib/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin() [0x4c4b6e]

        --> backtrace[09] rip 00000000004c7be4 /usr/lib/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin() [0x4c7be4]

        --> backtrace[10] rip 00007fa9b1cb1c4d /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xfd) [0x7fa9b1cb1c4d]

        --> backtrace[11] rip 00000000004a2f79 std::basic_streambuf<char, std::char_traits<char>>::xsgetn(char*, long)

Please let me if this is a bug in ovftool to integrate VCD 5.1.

Thanks,

Jeff

I have downloaded and installed the OVF tool but when i try and copy/deploy the OVF to the server i get a message below.

Error: Failed to open OVF descriptor

Completed with errors

Any help you guys can give would be great. thanks

I want to set some properties to ovf files.

I use ovftool as bellow:

ovftool --prop:ip=10.32.23.123 --prop:dns=255.255.254.0

when this command has been executed without error showing, I still cannot see the property of ovf files.

Then I used ovftool myovffile.ovf

I still can not see the property I want to set.

what should I do?

All,

First of all, apologies if this is an inappropriate forum. I do not have a support contact for this issue. We are VMware customers, however our licenses are purchased through an academic reseller. Our concern is that this bug has crept into recent releases and perhaps gone unnoticed in QA. It's serious enough for us to consider moving to other hypervisor products.

I believe there may be a serious bug in OVFtool's disk read code. We observe that VMs are created OK after upload or import, but disk contents are zero-filled. No error conditions are reported at any time. It is only clear that the bug has been exercised, when an uploaded or imported VM fails to boot.

We have several research VMs with multiple LANs, which run FreeBSD 8.2 in VMware Fusion 5.0.2, MacOS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion. I was also able to reproduce the bug with a fresh installation of vSphere ESXi 5.1 and ovftool 3.0.1. V

Using the separately packaged ovftool, I can export the VMs inside Fusion, by giving fully qualified paths to their VMX files. The bug appears to be in VMDK read. I exercised it in two use cases, Fusion OVA import and ESXi OVA upload, as follows:

1. If I import an affected OVA into Fusion from the GUI, Fusion will invoke its own copy of ovftool 3.0.1 to perform the import. VMs are created with a sane VMX file. VMDKs are created. However their contents are zero-filled, and the VMDK contents in the OVA have been ignored.
2. If I upload an affected OVA to ESXi, using ovftool and a vi:// target URL on the command line, the same bug is observed with ESXi. Again, the VMX is sane - we inspected this by SSHing into ESXi and manually reviewing the VMX on the VMFS data store with vi. The VMDK contents are zeroed on the VMFS datastore, and the VMDK contents in the OVA have been ignored.

ovftool seems, in some cases, to ignore the contents of the packaged VMDK files in OVAs, and those associated with VMX files from VMware products.

To date I have only been able to reproduce the issue with FreeBSD guests. The bug does not appear in all exported OVAs, however affected VM and OVA combinations will consistently demonstrate it.

• We first noticed this problem in October 2012, and have not been in a position to exercise it thoroughly until now.

• I can make an OVA available which demonstrates the issue. Please contact me privately to arrange. The files are typically 2GB in size.

Other observations:

• There is no problem with OVA generation. I have inspected the OVAs manually using tar, extracted the embedded VMDKs inside, converted them back to 2GB sparse format using vmware-vdiskmanager (or vmkfstools under ESXi), and loaded them into ESXi and Fusion respectively.

• Since ovftool was introduced, VMDKs must be uploaded manually using SFTP to avoid triggering the bug. The functionality in the vmware-vdiskmanager command which allows direct upload to ESXi servers has been removed.

• Casual inspection with DTrace under OS X reveals that ovftool seems to be reading the full OVA file contents. We initially thought there may been a problem with VMDK upload, however other guests have not been affected.

• The serialized format VMDK contents in the OVA are consistent with the original VMDKs. We verified this in one case with MD5 checksums. This requires denying all writes during the test.
• We also reproduced this bug with out-of-box, unmodified FreeBSD installations, as our research VMs use ZFS in GPT partition containers.

• We also noticed that Fusion's private copy of ovftool will break if ESXi specific options are specified in $HOME/.ovftool - although this is a separate issue from the main bug.
• No source code is supplied for ovftool, so users are not able to fix this issue themselves.

Workarounds:

• We load the OVA into Oracle VirtualBox, and re-export the OVA from there.
• This is undesirable for many reasons, the main one being that it loses all the network binding information, which is critical to our work.

thanks,

Bruce

Hi All,

I'm unable to get ovftool to export a vm from my server that has spaces in the path to the vmx file.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

On the server:

~ # vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

Vmid Name             File Guest                              OS Version     Annotation

112  ar-vm            [sata3] har_vm/har_vm.vmx                rhel5_64Guest  vmx-07

16   eluefin          [sata1] eluefin/eluefin.vmx              rhel4_64Guest  vmx-07

32   igloo (RH5)      [sata0] igloo (RH5)/igloo (RH5).vmx      rhel5_64Guest  vmx-07           

When I try to export "igloo (RH5)":

C:\OVF_Tool>ovftool.exe  --compress=9 --X:logToConsole "vi://root:doublesecret@hoo.lgc.com/ha-datacenter?ds=[sata0] igloo (RH5)/igloo (RH5).vmx" F:\igloo

2013-05-23T12:55:47.089-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] [SSL_DB] Using C:\Users\owjune\AppData\Roaming\VMware\ovftool_SSLDB as SSL DB

2013-05-23T12:55:47.105-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 2 (SIGINT)

2013-05-23T12:55:47.105-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 4 (SIGILL)

2013-05-23T12:55:47.120-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 22 (SIGABRT)

2013-05-23T12:55:47.120-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 8 (SIGFPE)

2013-05-23T12:55:47.120-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 15 (SIGTERM)

2013-05-23T12:55:47.120-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] OvfTool Version: VMware ovftool 3.0.1 (build-801290)

2013-05-23T12:55:47.120-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Using home directory: C:\Users\owjune\AppData\Roaming\VMware\ovftool.cfg

2013-05-23T12:55:47.120-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] OvfTool Environment:

--> /X:httpTimeout = "0"

--> /X:imageReadSize = "262144"

--> /X:logToConsole = "true"

--> /X:maxNumberOfTermSignals = "5"

--> /X:maxRedirects = "256"

--> /X:maximalDeltaConfSize = "8"

--> /X:maximalDeltaTreeSize = "6"

--> /X:progressSmoothing = "60"

--> /X:useMacNaming = "false"

--> /X:vCloudEnableGuestCustomization = "false"

--> /X:vCloudKeepTemplate = "true"

--> /X:vCloudTimeout = "3600"

--> /X:vimSessionTimeout = "600"

--> /authdPortSource = "902"

--> /authdPortTarget = "902"

--> /compress = "9"

--> /fencedMode = "bridged"

--> /prgPath = "C:\OVF_Tool"

--> /source = "vi://root:doublesecret@hoo.lgc.com/ha-datacenter?ds=[sata0] igloo (RH5)/igloo (RH5).vmx"

--> /target = "F:\igloo"

--> /vCloudTemplate = "false"

-->

2013-05-23T12:55:47.152-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Done initializing libs

2013-05-23T12:55:47.152-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Determining source

2013-05-23T12:55:47.152-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Determining target

2013-05-23T12:55:47.152-05:00 [02908 verbose 'HttpConnectionPool-000000'] HttpConnectionPoolImpl created. maxPoolConnections = 20; idleTimeout = 900000000; maxOpenConnections = 20; maxConnectionAge = 0

2013-05-23T12:55:47.152-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Getting http page: https://hoo.lgc.com/sdk/vimServiceVersions.xml

2013-05-23T12:55:47.152-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Proxy host

2013-05-23T12:55:47.167-05:00 [00756 info 'Default'] Thread attached

2013-05-23T12:55:47.183-05:00 [03816 verbose 'Default'] CURL: header data removed

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2013-05-23T12:55:47.183-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] [ViConnection] Using vim API version: 4.1

2013-05-23T12:55:47.183-05:00 [02168 info 'Default'] Thread attached

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2013-05-23T12:55:47.198-05:00 [03920 info 'Default'] Thread attached

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2013-05-23T12:55:47.198-05:00 [02752 info 'Default'] Thread attached

2013-05-23T12:55:47.245-05:00 [02908 verbose 'HttpConnectionPool-000001'] HttpConnectionPoolImpl created. maxPoolConnections = 1; idleTimeout = 900000000; maxOpenConnections = 1; maxConnectionAge = 0

2013-05-23T12:55:47.261-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Keeping VI session alive

Opening VI source: vi://root@hoo.lgc.com:443/ha-datacenter

2013-05-23T12:55:47.432-05:00 [02908 verbose 'Default'] Backtrace:

--> backtrace[00] rip 000007fef141722a

--> backtrace[01] rip 000007fef12df578

--> backtrace[02] rip 000007fef12e078e

--> backtrace[03] rip 000007fef129266b

--> backtrace[04] rip 000007feeeb0d3d1

--> backtrace[05] rip 000007fef0f703b8

--> backtrace[06] rip 000007fef0f707e9

--> backtrace[07] rip 000007fef0f8efbe

--> backtrace[08] rip 000007feee8b024e

--> backtrace[09] rip 000000013f83824d

--> backtrace[10] rip 000000013f7aca0d

--> backtrace[11] rip 000000013f7ad04a

--> backtrace[12] rip 000000013fa3a426

--> backtrace[13] rip 0000000076b5b1bd

--> backtrace[14] rip 0000000076d66861

-->

Error: vim.fault.FileNotFound

Completed with errors

Hi,

I am deploying a VM using a OVA format. The  size of OVA format is 60 GB. Currently free space on my datastore is 388 GB.

At the time of selecting Disk Format type if shows me in red that the disk size required is 1 TB therefore you cannot select THICK provisioning.

Therefore, i selected THIN provisiong. It THIN provisioing i am showed that Estimated Disk Usage is 112 GB which is less than the free space available.

But even after selecting THIN proviosing at the time of deployment it throws an error that it cannot create disk as the size of disk is larger than the maximum specified limit. 

My block size is of 1 MB.

I have an OVF I'm trying to import into VI (ESX 3.5) and I'm getting the following error:

Error: OVF Package is not supported by target:
- Line 57: No space left for device '7' on parent controller '6'.

Here's the snippet of OVF:

      <Item>
        <rasd:Address>0</rasd:Address>
        <rasd:ElementName>IDE 0</rasd:ElementName>
        <rasd:InstanceID>6</rasd:InstanceID>
        <rasd:ResourceSubType>piix4</rasd:ResourceSubType>
        <rasd:ResourceType>5</rasd:ResourceType>
      </Item>
      <Item>
        <rasd:AddressOnParent>0</rasd:AddressOnParent>
        <rasd:ElementName>Harddisk disk1</rasd:ElementName>
        <rasd:HostResource>ovf:/disk/disk1</rasd:HostResource>
        <rasd:InstanceID>7</rasd:InstanceID>
        <rasd:Parent>6</rasd:Parent>
        <rasd:ResourceType>17</rasd:ResourceType>
      </Item>
      <Item>
        <rasd:Address>1</rasd:Address>
        <rasd:ElementName>IDE 1</rasd:ElementName>
        <rasd:InstanceID>8</rasd:InstanceID>
        <rasd:ResourceSubType>piix4</rasd:ResourceSubType>
        <rasd:ResourceType>5</rasd:ResourceType>
      </Item>

Thanks!

Mike

There is unfortunately a bug in OVF Tool 3.0.1 on Mac that causes OVF Tool not to work if the current directory is not the same as the installation directory! For example, if you have made a symbolic link to OVF Tool or have OVF Tool in the path, you will see the following error:

Using a seperate process (python-vm-builder), I am building an ESX/ESXi compliant image that I have confirmed can be uploaded, imported and started in Workstation, ESX 3.0, ESXi 3.5 and even Server 2.0+.

I'm trying to go into the next step now, and convert this ESXi Image into a single OVF archive for even easier deployments.

Using the latest OVF Tool I have successfully created the new .ovf and zipped it up inside a tar.gz'd.  On my Windows box, I then extract it (using WinRAR), then using 'Import' in VIC try to import it.  When I select the OVF and click next it then throws the below error:

An error occurred while parsing the OVF descriptor

Unable to parse XML element 'Envelope'

What am I doing wrong? 

I have attached both the original VMX and the new OVF.

Please help!

Thank you.

Hey

This is a short writeup on what is needed to import OVF produced with VirtualBox 2.2.4 (and 2.2.2)

You should tell VirtualBox to export in 0.9 format.

By default it produce OVFs for vmx-06 so if you want to import this OVF into VMware vSphere 4 with esx 3.5.x and esx 4.0 hosts

you will have to change this to either :

&lt;vssd:VirtualSystemType&gt;vmx-07&lt;/vssd:VirtualSystemType&gt; (for a esx 4.0)

or

&lt;vssd:VirtualSystemType&gt;vmx-04&lt;/vssd:VirtualSystemType&gt; (for esx 3.5.x and 4.0 hosts)

If you are using VMware OVF tool to convert it to a vmx for workstation you dont have to change this.

Needed changes to import the OVF with VMware OVF tool.

Change soundcard to non-required (esx boxes do not support virtual soundcards and  the hostresource value is not in the DMTF std for rasd elements)

Change the rasd item to:

&lt;Item ovf:required="false"&gt;

&lt;rasd:Caption&gt;sound&lt;/rasd:Caption&gt;

&lt;rasd:Description&gt;Sound Card&lt;/rasd:Description&gt;

&lt;rasd:InstanceId&gt;7&lt;/rasd:InstanceId&gt;

&lt;rasd:ResourceType&gt;35&lt;/rasd:ResourceType&gt;

&lt;rasd:ResourceSubType&gt;ensoniq1371&lt;/rasd:ResourceSubType&gt;

&lt;rasd:AutomaticAllocation&gt;false&lt;/rasd:AutomaticAllocation&gt;

&lt;rasd:AddressOnParent&gt;3&lt;/rasd:AddressOnParent&gt;

&lt;/Item&gt;

of if you really need the soundcard to:

&lt;Item ovf:required="true"&gt;

&lt;rasd:Caption&gt;sound&lt;/rasd:Caption&gt;

&lt;rasd:Description&gt;Sound Card&lt;/rasd:Description&gt;

&lt;rasd:InstanceId&gt;7&lt;/rasd:InstanceId&gt;

&lt;rasd:ResourceType&gt;1&lt;/rasd:ResourceType&gt;

&lt;rasd:ResourceSubType&gt;vmware.ensoniq1371&lt;/rasd:ResourceSubType&gt;

&lt;rasd:AutomaticAllocation&gt;false&lt;/rasd:AutomaticAllocation&gt;

&lt;rasd:AddressOnParent&gt;3&lt;/rasd:AddressOnParent&gt;

&lt;/Item&gt;

(Skip the next if you are converting to a vmx file (used for VMware workstation)) 

Disks on IDE Controllers are only supported by newer VMware products so it will be a good idea to add the following to the OVF

&lt;Item&gt;

&lt;rasd:Description&gt;SCSI Controller&lt;/rasd:Description&gt;

&lt;rasd:InstanceId&gt;10&lt;/rasd:InstanceId&gt;

&lt;rasd:ResourceType&gt;6&lt;/rasd:ResourceType&gt;

&lt;rasd:ResourceSubType&gt;lsilogic&lt;/rasd:ResourceSubType&gt;

&lt;rasd:Address&gt;1&lt;/rasd:Address&gt;

&lt;rasd:BusNumber&gt;1&lt;/rasd:BusNumber&gt;

&lt;/Item&gt;

and change the disk to point to this by changing the parent in the disk rasd element e.g.

&lt;Item&gt;

&lt;rasd:Caption&gt;disk1&lt;/rasd:Caption&gt;

&lt;rasd:Description&gt;Disk Image&lt;/rasd:Description&gt;

&lt;rasd:InstanceId&gt;8&lt;/rasd:InstanceId&gt;

&lt;rasd:ResourceType&gt;17&lt;/rasd:ResourceType&gt;

&lt;rasd:HostResource&gt;/disk/vmdisk1&lt;/rasd:HostResource&gt;

&lt;rasd:Parent&gt;10&lt;/rasd:Parent&gt;

&lt;rasd:AddressOnParent&gt;0&lt;/rasd:AddressOnParent&gt;

&lt;/Item&gt;

Will the VM work after the changes? That depends if your vm have driver for the scsi controller etc but atleast you can import it.

Feel free to comment

"A line such as ide1:0.fileName = "/dev/cdrom" or a line such as ide1:0.fileName = "/dev/scd0" wil cause the ovftool to abort with the following message:

- Device 'cdrom1' has a backing type that is not supported. This is a general limitation of the virtual machine's virtual hardware version of the selected host.

By contrast if the vmx file cdrom setting is set to ide0:1.autodetect = "TRUE"  this error is not received.

We are not sure if this can be overcome with other tool options, although we have not seen anything that looks promising.

Additionally, many of our settings are not carried over to the ovf format, they are simply dropped, such as the isolation.* settings.

Also, the original VM consisted of several disk files (vmdk).  The ovftool created one vmdk file from this VM.  We will require creating vmware persistent and vmware non-persistent disks for some of our VMs.

We are concerned that the ovftool may lose such disk information. This would be a show stopper for us, and would require us find an alternative solution for transporting VMs.

We would like for VMware to advise us of possible workarounds and any recommendations for these issues."

I used ovftool (1.0 running in a RHEL 5.2 VM) to create an ovf of a powered off RHEL 5.1 VM.  All was successful and I can probe the OVF without issue.  However, when I try to import it as a virtual appliance using Virtual Center 2.5 Update 5 I receive:

An error occurred while parsing the OVF descriptor:  Unable to parse xml element 'Envelope'

I've attached the ovf file.

Any ideas?