Is VMWare Workstation 16.2.4 incompatible with ESXi 8.0.0?

[TomHilbert]

After upgrading my ESXi 7 server to ESXi 8.0.0 I can no longer upload or download VMs from VMWare Workstation. Either the options are greyed out, or it fails with an ugly stacktrace. 

Is VMware Workstation 16 is just not compatible with ESXi 8, or is this some bug that might be fixed soon? I found no incompatibility warning on this site.

Upload failed: Error processing attribute "type" with value "HostDistEsxClusterStoreManager"

while parsing MoRef for ManagedObject of type vim.host.DistEsxClusterStoreManager

at line 7, column 2137

while parsing property "distEsxClusterStoreManager" of static type HostDistEsxClusterStoreManager

while parsing serialized DataObject of type vim.InternalServiceInstanceContent

at line 7, column 59

while parsing return value of type vim.InternalServiceInstanceContent, version [class Vmomi::InternalVersion:0x00990180]

at line 7, column 0

while parsing SOAP body

at line 6, column 0

while parsing SOAP envelope

at line 2, column 0

while parsing HTTP response for method retrieveInternalContent

on object of type vim.ServiceInstance

at line 1, column 0.

[n714]

i got the same issue when try to use ovftool backup the EXSI 8 host. wish they can fix it soon

[jim_holmes12]

Same issue with Workstation 17. I really start to wonder why I keep spending money on Workstation. There are hardly any new features, and stuff that vmware broke are not even fixed anymore.

Did really no one test the connection between Workstation 17 and ESXi 8.0.0?

[nglshmn]

Same here.

Come on VMWare, is nobody looking at this community and prepared to offer some support? Why does this functionality not work?

[fanto78]

Same issue (Workstation 16.2.5)

[kiranbhuee]

Download the latest version of ovftool from the below link.

https://developer.vmware.com/web/tool/4.5.0/ovf-tool

[SteveB2022]

Apparently it must still not be fixed. 

Just had the same issue after finally working out why ESXi 8 won't work with any of my video cards or Realtek NIC's (so I have no passthrough now)

Tried to move a server from my workstation (Pro - 16.2.4 build-20089737) to Version 8.0.0 and exactly the same failure error

Do you think it will ever be fixed?

[SteveB2022]

or do we have to only use OVF files?

[Shivaess]

This seems like false advertising at this point. It's been months and as far as I can tell there has been no acknowledgement of the issue and they are still advertising the compatibility in the page for workstation.

[telestrial]

Exact issue. Installed everything fresh this week and went to upload a VM and these error messages are what the responses are.   Seems like a bug to me.

[Glaweechi]

So I fixed this on my 16.2.4, by downloading the latest ovftool 

https://developer.vmware.com/web/tool/4.5.0/ovf-tool

take the win64 archive and extract that tool over the top of the workstation version in

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\OVFTool

after that I could upload.

J

[chrissa22]

Thank you this works 🙂

[craigywsm]

@GlaweechiThank you worked for me too