Converted VM from OVF to OVA and it fails to import. Error "no description available"

astrugatch

Hi Everyone,

We are in the process of moving some VMs from VMWare to XCP-ng. I've downloaded a test VM from our VMWare instance, used the OVF tool to convert it to OVA, but I'm getting the error "No Description Available" when trying to import. How would I go about fixing the OVA to be importable.

Thanks!

olivierlambert

Hi!

Have you tried first with the V2V feature? (In XO, Import/From VMware)
It's like your OVA is missing something. Can you check the VM does have a description before export it into OVA?

astrugatch

@olivierlambert

Hi Oliver, thanks for your reply.

I can't go the V2V route as our XenOrchestra doesn't have line of sight on our VMWare instance so the move needs to be offline.

Where would I look for the description in the OVF file? I'm not sure where it's supposed to be so I can't see where it would be missing.

I was able to bring the OVF into VirtualBox and export an OVA from there and that landed in XO / XCP without issue, but the VM keeps coming up as not having a completely installed.

olivierlambert

We could take a look at the OVA if you open a support ticket, that would help to fallback to a "default description" if there's none

astrugatch

@olivierlambert

Unfortunately we aren't on a paid plan (though that is definitely in our future plans). I was able to sort out the CD drive so I should be good to move forward with our migration even if we have to have virtual box as a middleman. It's only a handful of VMs anyway so this shouldn't be a big lift.

Thanks!

olivierlambert

Okay, if you can have a harmless OVA causing the issue, I'll be happy to take a look at the OVF file into it and check why it's broken

astrugatch

@olivierlambert
Sent in chat.

dfrizon

@astrugatch @olivierlambert We recently converted a VM from Vmware with OVFtool. Did you tried to re-run the ovftool command to convert OVA in OVF? I get the same error as you and solved when we converted the OVA in OVF, then imported without any error with XCP-NG Center.

astrugatch

@dfrizon
Did you just rerun the VMWareOVF tool and re-create the OVA? Did you need to modify the command at all?

I'm just running

OVFTool "Source.ovf" "Destination.ova"

Is there any option that needs to be added to the command or did the first run just not work properly?

dfrizon

@astrugatch we did the opposite:

Converted the VM from Vmware with OVFTool in .OVA format
Converted the .OVA file in .OVF file
Then.. imported the OVF file in XCP with XCP-NG Center

astrugatch

@dfrizon
In Xen Orchestra it is looking for an OVA and doesn't take an OVF.

My process so far was:

export template inside VCenter (OVF and Disk image)
Convert OVF+Disk to OVA with OVF Tool
Import OVA to XO.

Switching out step two to an import and export in VirtualBox worked, but obviously not our preferred option.