Unable to Deploy .ova Appliance with VMware vSphere

  • 7022054
  • 10-Oct-2017
  • 06-Apr-2019

Environment

ZENworks Configuration Management 2017
ZENworks Reporting Server Appliance
VMware ESXi with vSphere

Situation

Deploying .ova file using vSphere or extracting .ova to .ovf and importing the .ovf gives errors
  • Cannot find service '%s'.
  • Power on failure messages: Unsupported or invalid disk type 2 for 'scsi0:0'. Ensure that the disk has been imported.
  • Unable to create virtual SCSI device for 'scsi0:0' (/vmfs/volumes/faf9ddfa-d8689933/ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64-disk1.vmdk).

Resolution

  • Use the VMware Open Virtualization Format Tool Note 1 with the -tt switch to convert the .ova file to create .vmdk and .vmx files; e.g
# ovftool -tt=VMX ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64.ova ZRS_Converted
Opening OVA source: ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64.ova
The manifest validates
Opening VMX target: ZRS_Converted
Writing VMX file: ZRS_Converted/ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64/ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64.vmx
Transfer Completed                    
Completed successfully

# ls ZRS_Converted/ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64
ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64-disk1.vmdk  ZENworks_Reporting_62_Appliance-x86_64.vmx
  • Use the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Note 2 to convert and deploy the files from the previous step to vSphere

Additional Information

This may affect other appliances delivered in .ova format but has been seen with ZENworks Virtual Reporting Appliance 6.2.1 so the example given in the Resolution, above, refers to that.
  • At the time of writing (October 2017) the VMware utilities are available from the following locations
  • It may be necessary to have (or create) an account with VMware and login to access these files.
Micro Focus is not responsible for utilities and information provided by third parties.  Contact VMware as appropriate