Move Virtual from WS14 to ESXi 5.5 - Export Greyed out

[GregBradley]

My ESXi 5.0 server was having erratic failures so I exported the virtuals and have been running them on Workstation 14 while I fix the Server.

Server is now completely setup and running ESXi 5.5U3.

First assumption is that the way to move them is to use Workstation 14 to export the local virtuals to ovf and then import ovf on the "new" server.

Export to ovf is greyed out on all of my virtuals. I've carefully followed directions and even found a few youtube videos and the option is not available.

I do also have Workstation 12 on another computer. It is an expired trial. The Export to ovf works fine on that machine. I manually copied the files for one of my current virtuals and added it on WS12. Export is greyed out on that virtual but not on the other existing virtuals.

I would love to fix this issue but would love to have a work around to copy or move it manually to the ESXi 5.5 server.

UPDATE: I logged on to a customer where I am doing pretty much the same thing. I installed a new MS Server 2016 Physical Server, added Workstation 14 to it to run the virtuals from their VMWare ESXi server while it was being cleaned, updated, expanded. It works fine exporting to ovf files. So the problem could be related to my virtuals or the installation. Same version of Workstation 14 but installed on MS Server 2016 instead of Win 7x64. At least I know that one won't be a problem when I reinstall their updated VMWare Server. Now if I can just figure out my own.

Screenshots of Customer Working:

Mine NOT Working:

[continuum · Accepted solution]

On "mine not working" you use VMs with virtual hardware 5.x which is probably too old.

[GregBradley]

Thanks for the info. Upgrading the VM allowed me to export. Kind of crazy that there is no info from WS14 on the problem. Even something like "invalid format" would have led me to find a solution.

Now I can export but can't import to ESXi. Something invalid about the format. I will put that in a separate post to not confuse the issue.

[continuum]

Greg - if you are looking for a reliable way to import/export from WS to ESXi then I would suggest to learn this approach:
- on WS make sure your VM is powered down and has no snapshots
- convert the vmdks using vmware-vdiskmanager to an esxi-compatible format
- create a tar-archive including:

vmx-file

name.vmdk
name-flat.vmdk
name_1.vmdk

name_1-flat.vmdk

...
- on esxi extract the tar-archive and register the vmx
Occasionally you may have to do small vmx-file edits but you will get used to that pretty quick.
Alternative approach:
If you dont like to use your WS-host for the format conversion you can also upload the current vmdks and import them via vmkfstools -i.
IMHO first method is more reliable.
Anyway - the OVA export/import basically also is a tarball with a few additional features that can make using it easier - if they work.