Error "The maximum number of NICs supported for this virtual machine with hardware version 15 is 10." when deploying VM from Cloud Director

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• Trying to deploy from OVA or OVF Via VMware Cloud Director directly giving error "The maximum number of NICs supported for this virtual machine with hardware version 15 is 10" as it is attempted to create 12 NICs instead of the expected 6 NICS
• Creating the VM using the same OVA or OVF works without any issue in vCenter and only 6 NICs are created

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 

Cause

The OVF descriptor present extra Items in the OVF descriptor networking section similar to the following:

<Item ovf:configuration="e1000">
    <rasd:AddressOnParent>7</rasd:AddressOnParent>
    <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>true</rasd:AutomaticAllocation>
    <rasd:Connection>Test-Network</rasd:Connection>
    <rasd:Description>E1000 ethernet adapter on por</rasd:Description>
    <rasd:ElementName>Ethernet 1</rasd:ElementName>
    <rasd:InstanceID>12</rasd:InstanceID>
    <rasd:ResourceSubType>E1000</rasd:ResourceSubType>
    <rasd:ResourceType>10</rasd:ResourceType>
    <vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="slotInfo.pciSlotNumber" vmw:value="32"/>
    <vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="wakeOnLanEnabled" vmw:value="true"/>
</Item>

Resolution

To resolve the issue remove entries in the networking section of the OVF descriptor to leave only the NICs required for the correct functioning of the VM.