Increasing the Write Timeout Value for Conversions to ESX Destinations

Products

• VMware

Issue/Introduction

In the Data to Copy page of the Conversion wizard, if you select disk-based cloning and choose to preserve the source disk size, the conversion might fail in case a large disk with a lot of free space is converted to an ESX destination.

This issue is related to ESX connection timeout limitations.

Environment

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.0.x

Resolution

A possible workaround is to manually increase the writing timeout value in the converter-agent.xml file :

1. Browse for the converter-agent.xml file in the following locations:

• If Converter Standalone runs on a Windows system, go to %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\.
• If Converter Standalone is running on a Linux system, go to /etc/vmware-converter/.

1. Open the converter-agent.xml file in a text editor and replace the default value for writeTimeoutMS with the desired timeout in milliseconds.

Note: The timeout value is measured in milliseconds. To specify the timeout in minutes, multiply the number of minutes by 60000 and use that value.

1. Restart Converter Standalone agent.

• If Converter Standalone agent runs on a Windows system, open the Services section in the Microsoft Management Console, find the VMware Converter Agent service and restart it.
• If Converter Standalone agent runs on a Linux system, find the Converter Agent process by running ps -axu|grep "converter-agent.xml" and terminate it. The Converter Standalone agent starts automatically the next time you initiate a conversion task.

Alternatively, instead of restarting Converter Standalone agent, you can reboot the system to make the changes to converter-agent.xml take effect.