Does workstation 10 support multi vm ovf (VirtualSystemCollection)?

[msaxbury]

I am trying to open an ovf that contains multiple vm's using the <VirtualSystemCollection> element rather than just a single vm using <VirutalSystem> element. Does workstation 10 support ova/ovf virtual appliances that contain multiple vm's? I am getting unsupported element 'VirtualSystemCollection'.

[Ethan44]

Hi

Welcome to the communities.

Its most of the time suggested to import individually ,please tried that.

Take care!

[msaxbury]

Thanks Ethan. But that defeats the purpose of the multi vm virtual appliance. I was able to import it to a vapprun workspace using ovftool. Can workstation see those vm's and manage them? Anyone know how to get workstation to see those vm's that are in a vapprun workspace?

[WoodyZ]

I haven't used vApprun however from the README file in the vapprun-1.0.zip file...

System Requirements

-------------------

VMware vApprun is supported on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It requires the following

software installed:

. Python 2.5 or 2.6 (www.python.org)

. VMware Workstation 6 or later (Windows/Linux)

. VMware Fusion 2 or later (Mac OS X)

So from that alone one could assume that vApprun works with VMware Workstation.  I'd suggest reading the documentation that comes with vApprun!

[msaxbury]

I did read the documentation and it only states what you pasted. Hence my question to the community. I am looking for instructions on how to see my vApp in vapprun workspace in workstation 10. It is not currently powered on.

[WoodyZ]

There is more to the README file than what I quoted and there is also a userguide.html file in the doc folder!   If you're trying to open the VM directly in VMware Workstation well...  File > Open...  or just double-click the .vmx configuration file!

[msaxbury · Accepted solution]

Hi all thanks for the suggestions. I had read all the documentation. I was dealing with a multi-vm virtual appliance(vApp) with 3 windows servers containing my solution stack, packaged in the ova. I tried to directly open/import the ova into workstation 10 but it complained on the <VirtualSystemCollection> and did not like the multi-vm aspect.

I installed vapprun v1.0 and ovftool v3.5.0 and used the following process to get my multi-vm ova imported into vapprun workspace and visible with workstation 10:

1. vapprun init -- initialized the vapprun workspace

2. ovftool "c:\path to my ova file" c:\path_to_my_vapprun_workspace  -- deployed the multi-vm ova to my workspace

3. edited the *.cfg files since I have custom vcenter properties associated with the vApp as well as for each vm.

4. vapprun start -gui "name of vapp"  -- without the -gui flag the vapp/vm's do not start. I had to use the -gui flag and that automatically launches workstation and the console for the vm becomes active.

Once the start up is initiated, the vm's are seen within workstation until I remove them.