Deployment from OVA format.

[Bunty11]

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.  :smileyconfused:

My block size is of 1 MB.

[iw123]

This is likely down to the block size as the maximum file size you can have with 1MB block size is 256GB. See this Kb for more on that: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100356...

[Bunty11]

Does the vmdk files in .ova format get uncompressed after a virtual machine is created using that .ova file ?

But in thin provisinig shows me estimated size of 112 GB which is much less than the 256 GB which is for 1 MB block size.

That is what i am unable to understand.

[spravtek]

You can always unpack the ova file and see what's inside... There should be an ovf file and the VMDKs if I'm not mistaking.

[Bunty11]

Yes you are right there is a vmdk file inside. But i fail to understand that .ova template whos size 57GB(to be exact). And when deploying it gives me below error even after selecting thin provisioning.

I want to know is reformatting the datastore with 2MB blocksize or more is the only solutionm to this problem?

Pasting my exact error here:

Failed to deploy OVF package:File [datastore1] IMS Tester 1/IMS Tester1_2.vmdk is larger than maximum size supported by datastore 'datastore1

[Bunty11]

And what is a method to open a .ova file to see the ovf files within. Is it mandatory to open ova file into a ovf format before a virtual machine can be created ?

I will also like to know can we remove the .vmdk files which are not needed from .ova file.

[spravtek]

ManvendraBele wrote:

And what is a method to open a .ova file to see the ovf files within. Is it mandatory to open ova file into a ovf format before a virtual machine can be created ?

It's not mandatory, an ova file is just a way to package (like tar) the ovf file and the belonging vmdk-files ...

How big are/is the vmdk file when you unpack the ova?

edit: you can try a tool like 7zip to unpack the ova

[Bunty11]

will removing unwanted .vmdk files using 7zip will it affect the deployed vm..

i am yet to try this. but just  want to confirm before trying. but will let you know the results.

[spravtek]

I'm not saying removing things ... Just unpack the ova file on your workstation or on a disk where there's enough room to unpack the entire ova.

Then just check the size of the vmdk's in that ova file.

If you want to re-format the datastore with 2mb you of course need to copy off all existing VM's

[Bunty11]

my ova format contains .ovf, .vmdk and .mf file

[spravtek]

It's your own ova?

From what is the ova file? What program, is it something public?

How big is the vmdk now after it is unpacked from the ova?

[chriswahl]

If you are using VMFS-3 with a 1 MB block size you are still limited to a VMDK file provisioned size of 256 GB. Even if you only have 112 GB of data written to the VMDK via a thin VMDK. Verify what size of a disk the OVA is trying to provision and that you are using VMFS-3.