Hi,

trying to convert a "SUSEstudio" generated vmdk/vmx to our VI.

I have:

SLE_11.1JeOSPHR.x86_64-0.0.3.vmdk

SLE_11.1JeOSPHR.x86_64-0.0.3.vmx

christian@chrisw:/srv/ISO/JeOS/SLE_11.1JeOSPHR-0.0.3> ovftool SLE_11.1JeOSPHR.x86_64-0.0.3.vmx

Opening VMX source: SLE_11.1JeOSPHR.x86_64-0.0.3.vmx

OVF version:   1.0

Name:          SLE_11.1JeOSPHR.x86_64-0.0.3

Download Size:     Unknown

Deployment Sizes:

  Flat disks:      4.04 GB

  Sparse disks:   Unknown

Networks:

  Name:        bridged

  Description: The bridged network

Virtual Hardware:

  Family:       vmx-04

  Disk Types:   SCSI-lsilogic

Completed successfully

#####

When I try to convert it to vi (to correct datastore) I'm getting the mentioned error:

so what is the correct syntax ??

christian@chrisw:~/srv/ISO/JeOS/SLE_11.1JeOSPHR-0.0.3> ovftool -ds=CX300-OTC-02 -dm=thick SLE_11.1JeOSPHR.x86_64-0.0.3.vmx vi://i000156@vc.icw.int/DC%20OTC

Opening VMX source: SLE_11.1JeOSPHR.x86_64-0.0.3.vmx

Please enter login information for target vi://vc.icw.int/

Username: i000156

Password: ********

Error: Locator does not refer to an object: vi://i000156@vc.icw.int/DC%20OTC

DataCenter="DC OTC"

DataSource="CX300-OTC-2"

THX

Chris

Is there a way to create an alarm trigger that base on Task?

When I am deploying a new VM machine, sometime I receive a time out error. I want my boss to know about it by an alert trigger that send him an email alert.

here is the task details.

Deploy OVF template
machie_test2
Operation timed out.         << -- I like to the alarm to triger base on this error.  is it posible?
coolman

VCENTER
1/18/2011 2:46:55 PM
1/18/2011 2:46:55 PM
1/18/2011 3:05:16 PM

I have tried all the tasks and events trigger under the datacenter, nothing seem to work.

It trigger other event but not task.

thanks in advance.

-C

Hi All,

    I have just exported an vApp using ovf from my vCenter v4u2. When I try to import into Vmware Workstation 7.1(running on Window 7 Ent 64bit) I get the following error message "The OVF descriptor file could not be parsed."  I have attached the log.

Cheers!

I am trying to create an OVF from a vm in vsphere - I'm running ovftool on a linux machine, and using the following syntax (I got this from the ovftool users guide):

ovftool username@myvcenter.aaa.com/"datacenter name"/vm/vmname /local/path/tostoreit/vnname.ovf

It prompts for a password, I enter the password, and it comes back with:

Opening VI source: vi://username@myvcenter.aaa.com/datacenter name/vmname
Error: Locator does not refer to an object:vi://username@myvcenter.aaa.com/datacenter name/vmname

Incidentally, I get the exact same error when I try using the mac version of ovftool, and the windows version.

Please help - I know this should work. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, but I have to get this working pretty fast.

Thank you!!

hello.

         I create a ova file from my ESXi 5.0.0 with ovftool 2.1.0-467744, then I deploy this ova file into ESXi 5.0.0 is success and work well.

But I can't deploy the same ova file into VMWare Player with ovftool 2.1.0-467744 installed. Why?

         Anybody has any idea? Thanks.

Best Regards,

Hi,

I have a ESXi 5.0 server running which has a Guest VM running CentOS 5.6.

The ESXi server is a standalone server, not included in a datacenter, not managed by vCenter.

The server has a HDD of 80G which has both the ESXi host & the Guest OS running on top of it.

I installed ovftools on my Windows laptop & tried to create a ovf from the VM but am unsuccessful. I constantly get the following error -

c:\>ovftool vi://root:<rootpassword>@<ESXi Host IP>/datastore1/CentOS c:\testVM.ovf

Error: Cannot parse locater: vi://root:<rootpassword>@<ESXi Host IP>/datastore1/CentOS

Completed with errors

The local datastore name is "datastore1"

Can someone help me out here with forming the correct the ovftool command to create an ovf & possibly an OVA out of the running VM?

Thanks

Bhushan Pathak

Hi All,

I have an ovf package with only one vmdk file of soze 3.3GB. When I am using ovftool with compress=9 option. Its giving me "VMX" of size 5.3GB

{{{

C:\>ovftool --compress=9 MyVM.ovf C:\Users\

Opening OVF source: MyVM.ovf

The manifest validates

Opening VMX target: C:\Users\

Writing VMX file: C:\Users\MyVM\MyVM.vmx

Disk Transfer Completed

Completed successfully

}}}

The Directory C:\Users\MyVM\ contains a .VMX and .VMDK ( 5.3GB size )

Any ideas why this increased size and why .VMX instead of .OVF ?

Thanks

Nikunj

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.

Hey all. I know I am using proper syntax, but it seems like there's a missing service running on my esx cluster. I am able to log in with vSphere, but cannot use ovftool to export a stopped server in my ESX 4.0 cluster environment.

command I am using:

ovftool vi://[username]:[password]@vi://192.168.77.111/[serverid] d:\[serveridoutput].ovf

the error I am receiving is as follows:

Error: Could not lookup host: [username]

Completed with errors

Now it's interesting because the server does seem to know that I am using a proper user/pass because if I make a mistake on the password, I am given another chance to log in, until I miss three tries. If I enter the correct password, it seems to almost connect, then fails out with the above error. I would *REALLY* appreciate some help with this guys.

Thanks in advance!

hi everyone

im trying to install Solar Winds virtualization manager on my Esxi 3.5.

The appliance is on OVA format.

i got o File--> Virtual Appliance -->Import-->Import the file and i get the next error:  An error occurred while parsing the OVF descriptor: System out of memory exeption.

Then i try to extract the ova file, and i get 4 new files, one of them a OVF. then i try to use it and i get the the next error: An error occurred while parsing the OVF descriptor : Unable to parse xml element ´Envelope´.

This is a OVF version error, 3.5 use a older version of OVF, (0.9 i think).

I dont know how to install this appliance , i hope u can help me.

SORRY FOR MY BAD ENGLISH!!!

HI,

I'm trying to create an OVF using ovftool 3.0.1. When I issue the ovftool command from the command line I get:

Error: cURL error: Couldn't connect to server
Completed with errors

I used the following command:

/usr/bin/ovftool vi://username:password@XX.XX.XX.XX/datacenter/vm/folder/vmname /destination

I can issue the command as above without the vmname to see if I can access Vsphere and to make sure I have a valid source locator.  The command is successful and returns a list of VMs I can use. When I add the VM name to the source locator path, I get the above error. The VM is pysically about 14GB in size (that is the space alloacted).

I can use the same command to another Vpshere server and I'm successful in creating the OVF. Which leads me to think that it might be a configuration issue with this Vsphere server?

What sorts of issues can lead to the above error?

Thanks,

Fernando

I have an OVA that have built and deployed via VIC many times successfully.  I am now trying to automate the deployment via the OVFTOOL.  However, I keep seeing this "transfer failed" message.  Is there some way to enable a more verbose output?

Here is my current command/output:

ovftool --acceptAllEulas --datastore=dsRTPPOC1 --network="VM Network" z:\Jazzsm\IBM_Jazz_for_Service_Management___v1_1___Sprint_23.ova vi://admin:password@rtpvcpoc1.tivlab.raleigh.ibm.com/ZoneM/host/ZoneM/rtpesxpoc1.tivlab.raleigh.ibm.com/
Opening OVA source: z:\Jazzsm\IBM_Jazz_for_Service_Management___v1_1___Sprint_23.ova
Opening VI target: vi://admin@rtpvcpoc1.tivlab.raleigh.ibm.com:443/ZoneM/host/ZoneM/rtpesxpoc1.tivlab.raleigh.ibm.com/
Warning:
- The specified operating system identifier 'RedHat Enterprise Linux Server 6.2' (id: 80) is not supported on the selected host. It will be mapped to the following OS identifier: 'Other Linux (64-bit)'.
Deploying to VI: vi://labadmin@rtpvcpoc1.tivlab.raleigh.ibm.com:443/ZoneM/host/ZoneM/rtpesxpoc1.tivlab.raleigh.ibm.com/
Transfer Failed
Error: System error: (Unknown exception)
Completed with errors

Hi,

I am getting below error while depoying a OVF template. Please suggest.

Failed to Deploy:Unable to access file: server1.vmdk.
The process cannot access the file "fullpath of vmdkfile\server1.vmdk' because it is being used by another process.

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

I am attempting to determine an easy method to deploy .OVA templates for quick provisioning/deployment of VM's.

I have built VM baselines using a development vSphere cluster and exported the VM to .OVA using vSphere client. Those .OVA files reside on a Linux fileserver with ovftool installed on the system and network access to future ESXi and/or vSphere clusters.

Is it possible to 'deploy' the .OVA template from the Linux fileserver directly to a remote ESXi host's datastore and/or vSphere cluster datastore? I cant get it to work.

My OVA file:

[root@centos_lab1 u0]# ls -lha

total 5.9G

drwxr-xr-x.  3 root root 4.0K Jun 28 08:48 .

dr-xr-xr-x. 24 root root 4.0K Jun 25 11:30 ..

-rw-r--r--   1 root root 5.9G Jun 24 10:01 test.ova

Attempting to deploy to ESXi host:

[root@centos_lab1 u0]# ovftool test.ova vi://root:test123@172.16.16.81

Opening OVA source: test.ova

Opening VI target: vi://root@172.16.16.81:443/

Error: No target datastore specified. Possible completions:

  iSCSI-Large

  ESX1_local_datastore

  iSCSI-Equallogic

  fusionio

  Super_ISO

Completed with errors

[root@centos_lab1 u0]# ovftool test.ova vi://root:test123@172.16.16.81/iSCSI-Equallogic/

Opening OVA source: test.ova

Error: Locator does not refer to an object: vi://root@172.16.16.81:443ha-datacenter/host/esx1.lab.q9.com/Resources/iSCSI-Equallogic/

Completed with errors

Any idea what I am doing wrong here? Is what I am trying to do even possible with ovftool?

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.

Hi everyone,


When I tried to launch the deploy command without indicating the host domain (scivsd05), the following error was launched: 

ovftool "X:logToConsole" "datastore=myds" "network=mynet" "machineOutput" --name="test13" test.ova "vi://user:pass@vcenter.domain.lan/&lt;mydc&gt;/host/&lt;mycluster&gt;/scivsd05"

2014-12-02T16:11:24.881+01:00 verbose Curl_perform error code 6 (Couldn't resolve host name)

2014-12-02T16:11:24.882+01:00 verbose CURL error buffer: Could not resolve host: scivsd05 (Domain name not found)

2014-12-02T16:11:24.882+01:00 verbose Connection error during upload

2014-12-02T16:11:24.882+01:00 verbose Connection error, sleep then retry (10 remaining)

If I indicate the host domain, then an "Locator does not refer to an object" error is launched:


ovftool "X:logToConsole" "datastore=myds" "network=mynet" "machineOutput" --name="test13" test.ova "vi://user:pass@vcenter.domain.lan/&lt;mydc&gt;/host/&lt;mycluster&gt;/scivsd05.domain.lan"

The name resolution for the ESXi host "scivsd05.domain.lan" is correct from both machines, the vCenter machine and the machine where OVFTool is installed.


Any idea? Thanks in advance!


 

ovftool "X:logToConsole" "datastore=myds" "network=mynet" "machineOutput" --name="test13" test.ova "vi://user:pass@vcenter.domain.lan/&lt;mydc&gt;/host/&lt;mycluster&gt;/scivsd05"

2014-12-02T16:11:24.881+01:00 verbose Curl_perform error code 6 (Couldn't resolve host name)

2014-12-02T16:11:24.882+01:00 verbose CURL error buffer: Could not resolve host: scivsd05 (Domain name not found)

2014-12-02T16:11:24.882+01:00 verbose Connection error during upload

2014-12-02T16:11:24.882+01:00 verbose Connection error, sleep then retry (10 remaining)

ovftool "X:logToConsole" "datastore=myds" "network=mynet" "machineOutput" --name="test13" test.ova "vi://user:pass@vcenter.domain.lan/&lt;mydc&gt;/host/&lt;mycluster&gt;/scivsd05.domain.lan"

HI, I am using ovf tool.exe to  upgrade of SSO from 5.5 to 6.0 on linux guest machine using windows as ovftool host as  but not able to get the proper command .


My current command looks like below -

ovftool X:logFile=C:\log.txt "X:logLevel=verbose"  --acceptAllEulas -ds=upgrade-3  --powerOn --X:waitForIp  C:\folder\VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.0._OVF10.ova   vi://root:vmware11@10.110.xx.xxx/

Please let me know if anyone has tried this earlier or any way to pass the config file as json or similar.


Any pointers will be much appriciated. Thanks in advance.


The log is as 


2015-03-11T00:09:02.524-07:00 verbose -[02872] Curl session torn down

2015-03-11T00:09:02.524-07:00 verbose -[02872] Using vim API version: 5.5

2015-03-11T00:09:02.619-07:00 verbose -[02872] Determine if server is a standalone host or vpxd

2015-03-11T00:09:02.619-07:00 verbose -[02872] Login to server based on username and password

2015-03-11T00:09:02.619-07:00 verbose -[02872] Setting VI connection message locale (via login) to: 

2015-03-11T00:09:02.620-07:00 verbose -[02872] HttpConnectionPoolImpl created. maxPoolConnections = 1; idleTimeout = 900000000; maxOpenConnections = 1; maxConnectionAge = 0

2015-03-11T00:09:18.754-07:00 verbose -[02872] Setup nfcService, used to get a ticket for uploading/downloading a disk.

2015-03-11T00:09:18.826-07:00 verbose -[02872] Get host or vc sslthumpprint.

2015-03-11T00:09:18.826-07:00 verbose -[02872] Keeping VI session alive

2015-03-11T00:09:18.849-07:00 verbose -[02872] Backtrace: 

F:\vcsa-cli-installer\win32\ovftool&gt;ovftool X:logFile=C:\log.txt "X:logLevel

Dear all,

My company will be closed soon and we need export the finance related VM to keep for several years for audit purpose.

We are using vCenter 5.0 right now. Which format should we used for export VM? OVF or OVA?

There will have chance that the VM need import again and we hope the format will be more favour to be import in the future vCenter after  5-6 years.

Please kindly help.

Ivan

Hi all,

I am trying to implement an OVF support for some virtualization software, which is using raw images for disks. I use qemu-img to convert raw images to vmdk format. Then I use ovftool to convert ovf file into vmware instance.

When the file I have is a simple ovf descriptor + manifest + disk - all is fine, it works even if I'm using qemu-img without "compat6" option

When the disk is compressed or the OVF package is packed into OVA - there are errors being thrown. Moreover when I create OVA package with no disk, the conversion works.

Here is the fragment of results for the OVA file:

Writing VMX file: test_ova.vmx
[2011-10-03 16:34:35.685 7F097D2C1720 verbose 'ovftool'] Using file size as progress measure
Disk progress: 0%[2011-10-03 16:34:35.685 7F097D2C1720 verbose 'ovftool'] Ovf::GetFileSource as StreamVmdk failed. Exception: Cannot open disk source: Not a supported disk format (sparse VMDK version too old)
Disk Transfer Failed                      
Error: Failed to open source disk: 3f66f54d-a9fa-4aa8-806d-d757d6f34a59.disk0.vmdk
[2011-10-03 16:34:35.685 7F097D2C1720 verbose 'ovftool'] Backtrace:
[00] rip 00007f09767453e4 
[01] rip 00007f09765e99d4 
[02] rip 00007f097658e038 
[03] rip 00000000004fef51 
[04] rip 000000000054aaa5 
[05] rip 000000000054ae78 
[06] rip 000000000049c41a 
[07] rip 00007f0974e62c4d 
[08] rip 000000000047ec7a 

[2011-10-03 16:34:35.685 7F097D2C1720 verbose 'ovftool'] Deleting file: ./test_ova-disk1.vmdk

Same fragment when I unpack OVA and then run ovftool on the .ovf file:

Writing VMX file: test_ovf.vmx
[2011-10-03 16:35:53.934 7F7E899C4720 verbose 'ovftool'] Using file size as progress measure
Disk progress: 0%[2011-10-03 16:35:53.935 7F7E899C4720 verbose 'ovftool'] Ovf::GetFileSource as StreamVmdk failed. Exception: Cannot open disk source: Not a supported disk format (sparse VMDK version too old)
Disk progress: 99%[2011-10-03 16:35:54.106 7F7E899C4720 verbose 'ovftool'] Ovf::GetFileSource: Opened 3f66f54d-a9fa-4aa8-806d-d757d6f34a59.disk0.vmdk as diskLib source
[2011-10-03 16:35:54.106 7F7E899C4720 verbose 'ovftool'] Opening disk target /xcinstall-1.corp.google.com/VirtualLsiLogicController0:0
Disk Transfer Completed                   
Completed successfully

Thank you.