Converting OVA exported from VMware Cloud Director to OVF using ovftool fails: "Transfer failed Disk (vm-########-####-####-####-############-disk-#.vmdk) could not be found."

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

 

• Converting an OVA to OVF using ovftool fails with an error similar to the following:
  
  Transfer Failed
Error: Disk (vm-########-####-####-####-############-disk-#.vmdk) could not be found.
Warning:
 - Wrong file size specified in OVF descriptor for 'vm-########-####-####-####-############-disk-#.vmdk' (specified: #########, actual 0).
  
  
  
  
• With the --X:logToConsole option, the log shows:
  
  [timestamp] error OVFTool[11852] [Originator@6876 sub=StreamVmdk] Error on read, error: -1
[timestamp] info OVFTool[11852] [Originator@6876 sub=StreamVmdk] [STREAMVMDK] Exception while reading VMDK header: Error on read, error: -1.
[timestamp] info OVFTool[11852] [Originator@6876 sub=StreamVmdk] [STREAMVMDK] totBytesGrainData read:0, totBytesUncompressed:0, elapsedTime:2370382
[timestamp] verbose OVFTool[11852] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Ovf::GetFileSource as StreamVmdk failed. Exception: Failed to open disk: vm-########-####-####-####-############-disk-#.vmdk. Reason: Error on read, error: -1
  
  
  
• The OVA contains a VMDK larger than 8 GB.
• The OVA was exported from VMware Cloud Director.

Cause

The OVA is packaged as a pax-formatted tar archive, which ovftool cannot handle.

Resolution

OVA file can be converted to OVF file via the tar command as a workaround.

e.g.)
tar -xvf source.ova