Cannot upload VM from Fusion 8.5 to ESXi 5.5

[mcreilly]

Hoping somebody with a bit more experience with this tech can help me out here.

My environment -

iMac with Fusion 8.5 pro - running a handful of VMs with no apparent problems

Dell PowerEdge with ESX 5.5 - also running a handful of VMs with no apparent problems

I'm trying to offload one of the VMs from the Mac to the server - it's a simple Windows XP machine (required for one legacy application and isolated with no internet access). I connect to the ESX host OK from Fusion and see my list of VMs running on that host. I select the Fusion VM then I try to "Upload to server". It prompts me to select the ESX host, then a datastore, then immediately fails with an error "Failed to open disk: Windows XP Professional.vmdk".

The Fusion VM is set for hardware version 10, which lists ESX 5.5 as compatible. There is plenty of space on the datastore (the VM has a 130Gb disk, there is 470Gb of free space on the store). I've tried more than one datastore too just to see what happens but get the same result. I don't have a spare ESX server to try uploading this machine to.

I've read and re-read the steps listed for this process in the online help and I'm following them correctly.

I've tried completely closing Fusion, rebooting the Mac then trying the upload before doing anything else in Fusion - still fails the same way.

Google turns up some posts in this forum and elsewhere that describe similar problems but the solutions suggested don't appear to apply (e.g. checking for CDROM devices attached to ISO files, mine are attached to the host machine drive, making sure I'm not trying to upload a VM while it's powered up, etc).

Some workarounds were mentioned involving Workstation 11 on Windows... which I don't have. I do have VSphere client running on Windows though if that's useful.

Any suggestions?

[Darcyz]

Hi Mcreilly,

Welcome to Fusion Community.

I cannot reproduce your issue. Windows XP can be uploaded to ESXi Server 5.5 successfully from my side.

From your error."Failed to open disk: Windows XP Professional.vmdk".

it seems something wrong with your vm or snapshot file.

Could you please try to upload another vm to check whether the same error?

You can just create a DOS vm, it will be take little time.

if you still doesn't work ,please let me know.

Thanks and Regards

[mrchris76]

Hi, Having the exact same problem except I am trying to upload to ESXi 6.0. This is really quite frustrating, what other options are there?

Chris

[mini2008]

Hi all,

Welcome to Fusion forum.

Could you please attached the VMX of your VM that you want to upload to ESXi server? And it is much better if ovftool.log in ~/Library/Logs/VMware Fusion can be attached.

Thanks.

[mrchris76]

Hi, See attached for .vmx file. I do not have an ovftool.log in the location you mentioned I'm afraid. I have also upgraded today to the latest Fusion 8.5.2 but still have the problem.

Thanks

[Darcyz]

Hi mrChris76,

Welcome to Fusion Community.

I cannot reproduce your issue in the Fusion 8.5.x

You can try to use following method to isolate the problem.

a. create a Windows 10 dummy vm (no need to  install the system)

b. upload the dummy vm to EXSI sever

If it can be upload successfully, we can suppose there is no issue in ESXi and Fusion.

You can try to check the hardware version of your vm.

if you want to upload to the ESXI , you need to downgrade hardware version to 10.

if you still doesn't work, please let me know.

Regards

[mrchris76]

Hi,

Its looking like its something to do with that VM being created on another host, (Workstation Pro 12 on Windows). I just created a new linux VM in Fusion, changed compatibility to version 10 in order to upload to ESX6 an it appears to be working. I still need a solution to this but thinking maybe a permissions issue? I can just move the entire vm folder to my storage and register in ESX but I would like to use the upload functionality.

Chris

[Mikero]

Is the Guest OS Type set to OS X?

Is there any CD-ROM or floppy devices attached?

You can also check the vmware.log inside the VM's bundle folder (right-click the VM > Show Package Contents) for indications/error messages.

[mini2008]

Hi mrchris,

I noticed that there is one line '.encoding = "windows-1252"' in your VMX file, maybe such info like 'encoding="windows-1252"' also exists in the descriptor information of your VMDK.

If so, suggest to edit "encoding="UTF-8"" in VMDK file with dsfok-tools to avoid. Suggest to use the dsfok-tools according to "How to safely edit embedded vmdk-descriptions" in http://sanbarrow.com/vmdk-howtos.html#editvmdk.

If not, could you please take a screenshot of your VMDK descriptor like my attached file?

Hope helpful and thanks.

[grayfold3d]

I came across this post when facing this same issue trying to upload from Fusion 11.0.3 to ESXi 6.7.  I'd select the VM, then select the upload option, pick the server and datastore and it would fail right away. I'd previously used this same method to upload another VM.  I ended up deleting the snapshots from the machine that wouldn't upload. When I deleted these snapshots, I was able to successfully upload to the server. I'm not sure if there is an issue with uploading snapshotted VMs or if it was just an issue with one of my snapshots.