We run ESX7 but we have machines that have been with us for many years since we ran ESX 5. When importing some of these old VMs we would get the following error. We're running the "latest" branch on our XOA.
404 Not Found https://vca152.dcmanaged.net/folder/fcclaims-liv-claims03/emptyBackingString?dcPath=Enfield&dsName=FC-ENF-CLAIMS-ESX-SC1
The "emptyBackingString" part comes from CDROM entries in the VMX file and machines that give the 404 error have cdrom-raw type
ide0:0.startConnected = "FALSE"
ide0:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ide0:0.clientDevice = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "emptyBackingString"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
VMs that do import have a different CDROM device type, they also have ide1 rather than ide0
ide1:0.startConnected = "FALSE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "atapi-cdrom"
ide1:0.clientDevice = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "emptyBackingString"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
I found the lines in XOA:/usr/local/lib/node_modules/xo-server/node_modules/@xen-orchestra/vmware-explorer/esxi.mjs
that referred to the atapi-cdrom so I suspect the code needs to be adjusted to include the cdrom-raw type.
The workaround in the meantime is to change the CDROM settings in VMware to be "Emulate" rather than "Passthrough", this changes the type to Atapi anyway and the VM will then import.
regards,
Paul