OVA machine settings not deployed on standalone ESXi

[GerardvH]

Hi all,

I have a standalone ESXi 6.5 and I am deploying a linux ova. During the deployment I fill in the hostname, ip adres, login account etc. (This OVA is provided to us by our vendor) After that the system boots but non of the settings are implemented, so I can never login. I know this works on vCenter Server but it does not on standalone ESXi. Does anyone recognize this and does anyone know a solution?

Best regards,

Gerard

[daphnissov]

Those OVF properties cannot be set without a vCenter. Check with your vendor. Your appliance may require vCenter to function as part of the deployment.

[roadgeek]

This thread is several years old, but still relevant. I'm running a standalone ESXi 7.0.3i hypervisor with the free license. You can walk through the steps of deploying an OVA via the web GUI, and it will allow you to enter custom property values, but it never puts those values in the VM's .vmx file in a way that they can be read by the VM via vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.ovfEnv". I can see the custom property settings are present in the vmx file:

vami.hostname.windows_server_2019 = "FUNLAB3"
vami.ip0.windows_server_2019 = "null"
vami.netmask0.windows_server_2019 = "null"
vami.gateway.windows_server_2019 = "null"

but there's no way to access them from within the deployed VM. I'm guessing that vCenter usually takes care of making a copy of these properties and putting into the guestinfo.ovfEnv property, which is why none of this works.

I just wanted to post this in case others encountered this same issue, and to avoid losing hours chasing this down as I have.

[maksym007]

Wow. thx for refreshing. I did not know that