OVF Tool memory range error

[frwilliam]

I'm using the ovf tool to convert a virtual appliance to virtual machine format and getting a memory size limitation error based on the OVF source. The source ovf file specifies 4GB of memory for guest OS:

Error:

- Virtual machine has 4,096 megabytes of memory, which is outside the range of 4 to 3,600 megabytes supported on the host. This may be a general limitation of the host software, or specific to the guest OS selected for the virtual machine.

The work around is to edit the source ovf file and decrease the RAM size to 3 GB and conversion works fine. But I'm curious why this limitation is occuring. Is 3,600 MB the maximum virtual memory size supported byVMware workstation or server?

[KevinG]

> This may be a general limitation of the host software, or specific to the guest OS selected for the virtual machine.

What is the host and guest OS?

[admin]

Before we convert the OVF/OVA to a vmx file (or import into a esx or VMware server 2.0) we check if the guest OS support the amount of Memory and the number of CPUs selected.

It looks like the guest OS do not support 4GB of ram. To help clarify this you could post your <OperatingSystemSection>and I can look it up.

A sample <OperatingSystemSection could look like:

<OperatingSystemSection ovf:id="100" vmw:osType="other26xLinux64Guest">

<Info>The kind of installed guest operating system</Info>

<Description>Other 2.6x Linux (64-bit)</Description>

</OperatingSystemSection>

(this is from a fedora 11 64 bit OVF I had around)

eske

[frwilliam]

The host OS is: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.3

The guest OS is: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.2

Here is the OperationSystemSection from the ovf file. This worked fine when deployed on the ESX server as a virtual appliance:

<Section xsi:type="ovf:OperatingSystemSection_Type" ovf:id="88" ovf:version="5">

<Info>Guest Operating System</Info>

<Description>Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (32-bit)</Description>

</Section>

<Section xsi:type="ovf:VirtualHardwareSection_Type" ovf:required="true">

<Info>4096 MB , 2 CPU, 1 disk, 1 nic</Info>

<System>

<vssd:InstanceId>0</vssd:InstanceId>

<vssd:VirtualSystemIdentifier>system id</vssd:VirtualSystemIdentifier>

<vssd:VirtualSystemType>vmx-04</vssd:VirtualSystemType>

</System>

<Item>

<rasd:Caption>2 virtual CPUs</rasd:Caption>

<rasd:Description>Number of Virtual CPUs</rasd:Description>

<rasd:InstanceId>1</rasd:InstanceId>

<rasd:ResourceType>3</rasd:ResourceType>

<rasd:VirtualQuantity>2</rasd:VirtualQuantity>

</Item>

<Item>

<rasd:Caption>4096MB of memory</rasd:Caption>

<rasd:Description>Memory Size</rasd:Description>

<rasd:InstanceId>2</rasd:InstanceId>

<rasd:ResourceType>4</rasd:ResourceType>

<rasd:AllocationUnits>MegaBytes</rasd:AllocationUnits>

<rasd:VirtualQuantity>4096</rasd:VirtualQuantity>

</Item>

[gmoney]

I'm having the same issue with Workstation 7.1 and ovftool 2.0.1 on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SP1) on x86_64. My host system has 16 GB of RAM and 14428 MB or RAM is available for guests (in the Workstation preferences dialog). I have a number of VMs with more than 4 GB of RAM assigned to them and work fine so this appears to be some type of bug in ovftool incorrectly detecting the limits of the physical host.

[gmoney]

Ok, found the error. ovftool-hw4-config-option.xml has a hard coded limit of 3600 MB or RAM. Maybe that's a legit limit for that version of virtual hardware but that seems a bit odd to me. Once I changed that everything converted and ran just fine.