Conversion fails when source or destination do not support large files

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Conversion fails after you specify the source and attempt to move to the next step in the Conversion wizard.
• You receive the following error:
  
  Cannot open file, since the file is too big.
   
• The conversion may fail when the destination is select instead of the source as the condition is checked during both operations.
• The log files show the following error:
  
  Underlying file system does not support that big files.

converting-vm converting-vm-fails user-interface-wizard vcenter-converter

Environment

VMware Converter 3.0.x

Resolution

This message appears when Converter detects that the destination (or in some cases, source) does not support files larger than 2GB (large files support). This message also appears when Converter is unable to determine if the file system supports large files, in this case it falls back and prevents files larger than 2GB. This condition applies to the source if it is a virtual machine containing snapshots or a growable disk where the result may exceed 2GB on any file.

 

In addition, certain network protocols (such as SMB, NFS), or networked devices such as a NAS or file server (UNC) may not allow read or write operations on files over 2GB. In addition, the file system that is local to the device may also lack large file support, such as the FAT32 file system.

 

When a networked source is selected, Converter attempts to determine if the source or destination file system supports files over 2GB. Even if the file system is capable, certain aspects of the networking protocol may not pass this information to Converter and therefore prevent proper detection. To avoid possible corruption of the files, Converter issues this error message and stops the process instead of risking data integrity even if the file system truly supports the file size.

 

To work around this issue, move the source files to a different file system, use a different network protocol, or copy the files to the local file system to run the conversion.