Hello,

Andre , you are fantastic. 

I had the same issue with vsphere client 4.1 .   Four times I've tried it , same issue, timed out.

VM : Redhat Enterprise Linux  with fixed IP

Changed it to DHCP  and powered down the VM

Export completed in 15min.

Thanks again

Using 5.1 here and having the same problem with linux. Doesn't seem to matter if the host is using DHCP or not. I'm also really not sure how this would actually matter, as I have the system powered off when trying to export it.

Edit: I actually switched the system to DHCP just to try and see if things would work, boot it and made sure it got an address then shut it down for export. I still get the same issue where the export starts and some where around 3 GB, the whole operation slows to a trickle and eventually I get the error: Failed to export virtual machine: The operation has timed out.

Same issue here with 5.1

CentOS, disk > 200GB

If I try to export it will go for a bit, slow down and die.

I did an additional test, by downloading the vmfolder to my local laptop then using OVFtool to try and create a OVA from the local copy and same behavoir was observered.

Looks like a bug with the OVF Export?

failed to export ovf package

I got above error while i was exporting a VM to OVF. After troubleshooting found i was migrating a VM which was using 250 GB disk over 100GB partition. The VM was having thick disk. Then i have converted thick disk to thin by migrating VM on different datastore. Then exported the VM on that time it was completed successfully.

Exactly the same issue here.

2 x 200Gb+ drives, VM was originally cloned P2V to a test ESX environment. I now need to move it to the production cluster.

OVF export failes every time with the same timeout error.

This really needs a fix from VMWare now!

Hi sienna_pb,

Have you tried mentioned above. " convert vm disk into thin provision then migrate"

Thanks

Suresh Siwach

Think I've sussed this.. Appears to be when you have anything still attached, as in iso's etc, disconect everything i.e. make the dvd client and it will work.

Dazza

Quite the long running thread.

Use ovftool for VMs with disks larger than 200G.

What happens if you use the good old fat client and choose File->Export->Export OVF template. Then it worked for me, with web client it did not work.

I had the same problem. I gave up on the GUI and just copied the files (copy-datastoreitem) to a temp location and then onto another vCenter datastore which was my sole purpose of exporting it anyway. It didn't do the export, but accomplished what I needed. Hopefully this will help someone.

I can confirm that the problem of exporting virtual machines from esxi still presists in 6.5, but there is an excelent solution from vmware and it is called "VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Client" which is free and can be downloaded here: VMware vCenter Converter: P2V Virtual Machine Converter.

This converter can be installed on esxi's virtual machine and than it can transfer to other esxi server.

The metod of transfer with converter which I prefer is that it I can transfer VM's remotely, so converter is installed on for example windows 7 and then you can transfer from one esxi server to another no matter the size of VM.

I hope that this info is usable!

Confirmed, 8 years later, I cannot get a VM to export with:

- Web GUI

- OVFTool

- VMWare client

I have to export 5. I've managed to export 4. The last two of which are nuts. The penultimate I exported with VMWare Client, but it failed with OVFtool and the Web GUI.

Behavior is completely inconsistent and as far as I've been able to figure it out (third time I've had to do this), there is no discernible pattern. Does VMWare have a tool for exporting VMs? I've had this problem with different networks, different servers, and different VMs with different OSs so at this point I feel pretty confident when I say it's an ESXi problem.

Note: I'm using ESXi for the HP servers so maybe that's part of it? No clue at this point.

Edit: I'm still trying to export the last. So far it has failed using all three methods with different error messages each of which were equally unheplful as the last. VMWare client says operation timed out, OVFtool said:

2017-10-19T15:29:06.589-05:00 verbose -[7FCE99FFA700] [Originator@6876 sub=HttpConnectionPool-000001] [RemoveConnection] Connection removed; cnx: <SSL(<io_obj p:0x00007fce9407fb60, h:-1, <TCP '0.0.0.0:0'>, <                                                                                                              TCP '10.11.4.253:443'>>)>; pooled: 0

which I'm sure means something helpful to someone, but it isn't me, and trying to download via the GUI gets you 11 GB followed by a "network failure" (using Google Chrome).

This is miserable.

Edit 2: Forgot to mention, the network in this case is a dumb switch and the server so there's not a lot of margin for issue.

Check to see the VM's "CD/DVD drive 1" settings.

If it is connected to a "Datastore ISO file", the export usually fails.

Change "CD/DVD drive 1" of the exporting VM to be "Host device".

Thank you!  This was my issue.  Removing the CD drive fixed the issue.  Silly oversight on my part.