"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."