Deploying OVF in vSphere 6.5 fails if the corresponding virtual machine is connecting to an opaque network

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
If a user deploys OVF to create a virtual machine and connect it to an opaque network during the deployment, you see these symptoms:

• Deploy operation fails.
• Deploying an OVF with a storage policy selected fails.
• You see an error similar to:
  
  Unable to locate resources to place the Virtual Machine(s) VM_Name on Cluster. Reason: com.vmware.vdcs.placement.api.PlacementException: Unable to place VirtualMachine VM_Name on clusters Cluster [reason: Network Fabric placement failed with errors: Failed the requirement [NetworkPlacementRequirement [networkId=network-o32:########-####-####-####-##########, mandatory=true]] ]

• Deploying OVF with a datastore fails.
• You see the error:
  
  Network network-o42:########-####-####-####-########## is not available in compute resource domain-c7:da778c77-20cf-4ef6-88da-20e0ef7af832.

Cause

This issue occurs because the opaque network type was not recognized as a supported network type.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in VMware vCenter Server 6.5 U2d, available at Broadcom Downloads.
This issue is resolved in VMware vCenter Server 6.7, available at Broadcom Downloads.

Workaround:
To work around this issue if you do not want to upgrade, follow either one of these workarounds:

Option 1:

Connect the VM to a VSS portgroup (e.g. VM Network) during OVF deployment, and then reconfigure the virtual machine to connect it to the correct opaque network.

Option 2:

Deploy OVF using ovftool CLI. The virtual machine to be deployed can be connected to opaque network using --net option. For more information, see the OVF Tool User Guide.