Hello,

Im using ghettoVCB to backup my running VMs on same datastore. But when i wanna copy backed up VM, even if its in thin format, to my desktop running Win 7, size of file is same as size of virtual disk (backing up 2GB VM, used is 1,2GB, copied file is 2GB).

So i used Converter for exporting VM from VI to .ovf to my desktop. And if something goes wrong, ill import it back. But you cannt export running VM.

So i wanna used backed up unregistered copy of VM created by ghettoVCB to convert it to .ovf using OVFTools.

Is it somehow possible? When i try convert it with direct path to backup VM vmx, error: Error: " Locator does not refer to an object vi://root@IP/backups/wordpress/ " appears. Thanks for help.

Im running ESXi 4.1 update1

Hello,

I'm attempting to do a vmware to ovf converstion.  However, I'm receiving some fairly generic errors from ovftool and was hoping I could get some help.

Here are the console messages when I attempt to convert:

[root@provisionvrpt ~]# /usr/bin/ovftool --machineOutput --X:logToConsole=true /var/lib/vmware/Virtual\ Machines/vm/test.vmx /var/lib/vmware/Virtual\ Machines/vmovf/test.ovf
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 2 (SIGINT)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 4 (SIGILL)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 6 (SIGABRT)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 8 (SIGFPE)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 15 (SIGTERM)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 1 (SIGHUP)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 3 (SIGQUIT)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 5 (SIGTRAP)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.990 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 9 (SIGKILL)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.991 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Subscribing to signal: 13 (SIGPIPE)
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.991 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] [ovfTool.cpp] Using home directory /root/.ovftool
[2011-08-16 00:42:55.991 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] [ovfTool.cpp] OvfTool Environment:
/X:fencedMode = "bridged"
/X:imageReadSize = "262144"
/X:logToConsole = "true"
/X:maxNumberOfTermSignals = "5"
/X:maxRedirects = "256"
/X:maximalDeltaConfSize = "8"
/X:maximalDeltaTreeSize = "6"
/X:progressSmoothing = "60"
/X:vimSessionTimeout = "600"
/authdPortSource = "902"
/authdPortTarget = "902"
/machineOutput = "true"
/prgPath = "/opt/vmware/ovftool"
/source = "/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/vm/test.vmx"
/target = "/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/vmovf/test.ovf"

[2011-08-16 00:42:56.000 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] [ovfTool.cpp] Done initializing libs
[2011-08-16 00:42:56.000 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] [ovfTool.cpp] Determining source
[2011-08-16 00:42:56.212 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] [ovfTool.cpp] Determining target
[2011-08-16 00:42:57.488 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Failed to open disk: /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/vm/test.vmdk
[2011-08-16 00:42:57.488 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Exception: The specified virtual disk needs repair
Error: Failed to open disk: test.vmdk
[2011-08-16 00:42:57.493 B7FAC6D0 verbose 'ovftool'] Backtrace:
[00] rip 050210b3
[01] rip 04eb6e9e
[02] rip 04e55ec2
[03] rip 081c014b
[04] rip 08310271
[05] rip 08311b54
[06] rip 0831ad24
[07] rip 0831b1f7
[08] rip 0831b74c
[09] rip 081f871a
[10] rip 0816fa45
[11] rip 080cd318
[12] rip 0317be9c
[13] rip 080ae4f1

But when I attempt to repair the disk, I get the following:

vmware-vdiskmanager -R /var/lib/vmware/Virtual\ Machines/vm/test.vmdk
No errors were found on the virtual disk, '/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/vm/test.vmdk'.

Any help would be apprecaited.  Is there a way to increase the verbosity of the logging?

Here is my ovftool version info: VMware ovftool 2.0.1 (build-260188)

Thanks!

Dear:

          I create a ova/ovf file but its version is 1.0, how can i create 1.1 version files? I can't find any option in help. Thanks.

Best Regards,

Hello,

I'd like to know if it is possible to write files of VM in new folder, no in root directory in the datastore ?

E.g. I need to create soft which can be deploy every OVF files into Templates folder in DS.

Thanks in advance,

Radek

Right now I'm trying to sign an OVF Package and I receive these sets of errors when I do:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool.exe --privateKey= "C:\Documents
and Settings\jhamilto\My Documents\Downloads\bin\myself.pem" C:\tmp\test2.ovf
Opening OVF source: C:\Documents and Settings\jhamilto\My Documents\Downloads\bi
n\myself.pem
Warning: No manifest file
Error:
- Line 1: Could not parse the document: 'syntax error'.
Completed with errors

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool.exe --privateKey= "C:\Documents
and Settings\jhamilto\My Documents\Downloads\bin\myself.pem" \C:\tmp\test2.ovf \
C:\tmp\SignedTest.ovf
Error: Unexpected option: \C:\tmp\SignedTest.ovf
Completed with errors

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool.exe --privateKey="C:\Documents a
nd Settings\jhamilto\My Documents\Downloads\bin\myself.pem" \C:\tmp\test2.ovf \C
:\tmp\SignedTest.ovf
Error: Failed to open file:
Completed with errors

Do I have a syntax error or is there something else that I am missing?

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool  E:\vmdk2008\Windows2008\Windows
2008P2V.vmx   vcloud://suresh:suresh1@10.137.90.73:443?org=Org1-Cloud1&vapp=myVA
PPTets&catalog=cat2&vappTemplate=junk&vdc=OrgVDC-org1-Cloud1
Opening VMX source: E:\vmdk2008\Windows2008\Windows2008P2V.vmx
Error: Missing vappTemplate or vapp key in locator
Completed with errors
'vapp' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
'catalog' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
'vappTemplate' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
'vdc' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>

Hi All,

Everytime I manually export a VM using vsphere client, I am getting the resultant ovf of much larger size. ( i.e. size of .vmdk's are much larger, increases by 10% everytime )
I looked at various temporary files and log files and deleted them before taking the ovf, but it also doesnt reduces the size significantly.
My vm doesnt do any huge IO on the disks.

Is there a best practice for exporting an ovf .? ( Ex. SLES based vms. )

Thanks

Nikunj

Running OVF Tool 3.0.1 on 32 bit CentOS 6 Linux 2.6.32-279.11.1.el6.i686 (download from VMWare site md5sum was checked ok)

Tool starts up fine and is in the process of exporting a VM from one ESXi 4.1 host to another ESXi 4.1 host . 

Tool then crashes with /usr/bin/ovftool: line 23:  7629 Segmentation fault      (core dumped) "$OVFTOOL_BIN" "$@"

I'm trying to settup a vApp with one VM via the Java SDK api, how can this be achieved?

I have thried :

Only the computer name is updated correctly but the Virtual Machine name is not...which setting is the right one?

I'm posting also a picture of the deployed VM to see what am I trying to change

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

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

Using ovftool 3.0.1, I cannot figure out how to escape the backslash character when specifying the username and password in an FTP locator on the command line.

$ ovftool ftp://<DOMAIN>%5C<username>:<password>@<host>/Image.ova

keeps prompting me for the password, even if I repeatedly enter the correct one.

The same thing happens when I specify "ftp://<DOMAIN>%5C%5C<username>:<password>@<host>/Image.ova" instead.

Using the literal backslash character (i.e. <DOMAIN>\<username> or <DOMAIN>\\<username>) results in an error message saying "Error: cURL error: Couldn't resolve host name."

However, if I do not provide any credentials for the locator, ovftool prompts for the username and password. In that case, providing "<DOMAIN>\<username>" does work, though "<DOMAIN>%5C<username>" does not.

Please note that the FTP server unfortunately will not properly authenticate without prepending the domain.

I am using OVFTool to export a VM as an OVF file. I want to know if there is any way to add description during export. I can add EULA and other stuff but i am stuck at description.

Adding description is easy via vSphere client but i OVFTool doesn't seem to have such a provision. Any advice would be greatly helpful.

Regards.

Hi VMWare experts,

I am having problem with automation script because the string passed in the ovftool command uses credential vsphere.local\userXYZ instead of just userXYZ

It appears that the backsplash in the 'vsphere.local\user' cause the command line to be misinterpreted, so the automation script that calls ovftool to deploy VMs kept failing.  It erred with "cURL error of ‘couldn’t resolve hostname" even though there is nothing wrong with any hosts or hostname resolution on the network.

On a Win-based vCenter I was able to reconfigure it so that instead of requiring login user format of 'vsphere.local\userXYZ', it will now accept user = 'userXYZ'. 

With that change, ovftool.exe command string is now progress correctly and VMs are deployed. 

I could reconfigure Window-based vCenter to not use just user = userXYZ (instead of vsphere.local\account), but I could not figure out how to get vCSA to stop requiring the format of vsphere.local\userXYZ.

The string segment in the long ovftool.exe command line looked like this …

This works:

"vi://userXYZ:password@tm-vcenter55/DC2-SJ/host/Topology/csg-sj-esxi112.cisco.com"

This does not work:

"vi://vsphere.local\userXYZ:password@lin-vcenter55/DC2-SJ/host/Topology/csg-sj-esxi111.cisco.com"

Is there anyway to configure vCenter Virtual Appliance to use log in format of user = userXYZ instead of user = vsphere.local\userXYZ?   Or is there some way of reformatting the string so that OS can interpret it correctly even with backsplash '\' is used in the string?

Thank you

Charles

The complete ovftool.exe command is shown below:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool\ovftool.exe" --acceptAllEulas --skipManifestCheck --diskMode=thin --name=linsys2-vm1 --deploymentOption=vm_typeA --datastore=EMC-LUN1 --net:"Network Adapter 1"="VLAN 410 - 172.27.14.0/24" --net:"Network Adapter 2"="VLAN 410 - 172.27.14.0/24" --vmFolder=   --prop:cisco_hostname.Proj=linsys2-vm1 --prop:cisco_ip_0.Proj=172.27.14.135 --prop:cisco_dnsDomain.Proj=cisco.com --prop:cisco_netmask_0.Proj=255.255.255.0 --prop:cisco_gateway_0.Proj=172.27.14.1 --prop:cisco_dns1_0.Proj=172.27.200.199 --prop:cisco_dns2_0.Proj=173.36.131.10 --prop:cisco_language.Proj=English v:\ova\projectX_1.0.0.ova "vi://vsphere.local\userXYZ:password@lin-vcenter55/DC2-SJ/host/Topology/csg-sj-esxi111.cisco.com"

Opening OVA source: v:\ova\projectX_1.0.0.ova

The manifest does not validate

Error: cURL error: Couldn't resolve host name

Completed with errors

Installation Done!

Hi fellows,

                       I had deployed a virtual ESXi host on a physical ESXi and then I created an OVA file of that virtual host and then was trying to deploy the OVA after changing the IP, subnet mask and gateway properties of the OVA file. But when i used the probe mode to have a look at the class ID and other properties, I found them to be missing.

C:\Users\abhinav.srivastava>ovftool test1.ovf

OVF version:   1.0

VirtualApp:    false

Name:          vhost1

Download Size:  283.32 MB

Deployment Sizes:

  Flat disks:   25.00 GB

  Sparse disks: 325.44 MB

Networks:

  Name:        VM Network

  Description: The VM Network network

Virtual Machines:

  Name:               vhost1

  Operating System:   otherlinux64guest

  Virtual Hardware:

    Families:         vmx-08

    Number of CPUs:   2

    Cores per socket: 1

    Memory:           2.18 GB

    Disks:

      Index:          0

      Instance ID:    8

      Capacity:       25.00 GB

      Disk Types:     SCSI-lsilogic

    NICs:

      Adapter Type:   E1000

      Connection:     VM Network

So right now I am not able to change the OVA properties and deploy the virtual host. I need to do this as I want this step automated. Does anybody know why am I not able to see the properties of the OVA file. Am I going wrong somewhere. Kindly help!!

Thanks,

Abhinav

I have an esxi 4.1 server that we are decommissioning as part of a move.  We've decided to archive some of the VMs that were part of a test bed, in case we need to revive them later.  I've been copying the VMs directly to a USB hard drive on my Mac with ovftool, but I've found that about half of the testbed VMs cannot be copied.  Here is an example of a failure:

wpeters$ ovftool vi://root@zeus.dvt.tachyon.net/Riverbed/VSH_markt /Volumes/Archive/VSH_markt.ova

Enter login information for source vi://zeus.dvt.tachyon.net/

Username: root

Password: *********

Opening VI source: vi://root@zeus.dvt.tachyon.net:443/Riverbed/VSH_markt

Error: vim.fault.FileNotFound

Completed with errors


 


And a success, on another VM:

wpeters$ ovftool vi://root@zeus.dvt.tachyon.net/Riverbed/VSH_250m /Volumes/Archive/VSH_250m.ova

Enter login information for source vi://zeus.dvt.tachyon.net/

Username: root

Password: *********

Opening VI source: vi://root@zeus.dvt.tachyon.net:443/Riverbed/VSH_250m

Opening OVA target: /Volumes/Archive/VSH_250m.ova

Writing OVA package: /Volumes/Archive/VSH_250m.ova

Transfer Completed                    

Completed successfully


 


Does anyone have any suggestions of what to look for?  I've started and stopped these VMs from the console, so I'm certain the storage is still available, etc.


Thanks!

Hi,


I have ovftool version (4.0.0).I am trying to create an ovf  of a VM with extra config parameters. How do i specify the exportFlags command line option to allows the config parameters to translate from the VM to the ovf ? The documentation says I need to specify a extraconfig vSphere source .


This works fine : ovftool --allowAllExtraConfig  --extraConfig:ethernet1.coalescingScheme=disabled --extraConfig:ethernet0.coalescingScheme=disabled


but this doesn't : ovftool --exportFlags=extraconfig 


I don't want to add the key:value in the command line , rather pick up these from the VM  I am using to create the ovf.


Is there something that I am missing out ?


Thanks in advance


 

I've downloaded the recent version of ovftool (VMware-OvfTool-1.0.0-117388.i386.tar.gz) to use it on VMWare ESX 3.5 server

It shows the following error in CLI:

[root@vmserver ovftool]# ./ovftool
./ovftool: line 29: ./ovftool.bin: cannot execute binary file
[root@vmserver ovftool]# uname -a
Linux vmserver.local 2.4.21-57.ELvmnix #1 Wed Oct 15 19:00:05 PDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Unfortunately we can not use version for windows.

Has someone any solution?

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.