Uploading or downloading an OVF in vCloud Director fails with the error: Failed to delete transfer session directory or transfer session directory does not exist

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot download or upload an OVF to/from vCloud Director Catalog.
• Uploading or downloading an OVF fails between 6% and 98%.
• The OVF takes a long time to download or upload
• After 6%, the status appears as ready.
• The download/upload folder does not contain the OVF file.
• In the download/upload status dialog, you see the message:
  
  can not complete job at 6%
   
• In the vcloud-container-debug.log file, you see an error similar to:
  
  53655 2013-03-29 11:58:00,096 | DEBUG | Quartz-pool-1-thread-4 | TransferSessionUtils | Transfer session: <TRANSFER_UUID>. Failed to delete transfer session directory or transfer session directory does not exist: /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/<TRANSFER_UUID>

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 1.5.x
VMware Cloud Director 5.1.x

Cause

This issue occurs if vCloud Director cannot perform read/write operations to the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer folder/directory folder.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, verify that there is sufficient space in the vCloud Director virtual machine transfer cache directory's file system. If you require additional space for virtual machine imports and exports, mount an NFS volume internal to the vCloud Director virtual machine.

 

Also, ensure that the NFS folder is set with read and write permissions.

To check the permissions:

1. Log in to the vCloud Director with root credentials.
2. Change directory to /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer.
3. Run this command to test the read and write permissions:
   
   touch /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/test
   
   Note: If the test fails, the directory must be remounted with read/write permissions. This requires the vCloud Service Management to be shutdown.

To shutdown vCloud Service Management:

1. Change directory to /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin.
2. Run this command:
   
   In vCloud Director 5.1:
   
   ./cell-management-tool -u username -p password cell --shutdown
   
   In vCloud Director 1.5:
   
   ./cell-management-tool -u username -p password cell --shutdown

You must also ensure that the supplemental shared storage volume meets these requirements:

• It must be accessible to all servers in a vCloud Director cluster.
• When using NFS, this volume must have write permission for vCloud Director.
  
  To change permissions, run this command:
  
  chmod -R 775 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer
   
• Each vCloud Director host virtual machine must mount this volume:
  
  $VCLOUD_HOME/data/transfer, typically /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer.

Note: Uploads and downloads occupy this storage for a few hours to a day and the transferred images can be large. Therefore, allocate at least several hundred gigabytes to this volume.

 

For more information, see the Summary of Network Configuration Requirements section of the vCloud Director Installation and Configuration Guide.