"Invalid configuration for device" error deploying vApp or Deploying VMs from OVF in vSphere 6.7

Products

• VMware Cloud Director
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• In vSphere 6.7, you are unable to deploy OVF templates.
• In vCloud Director that is backed by a vSphere 6.7 environment, you are unable to add a vApp from OVF.
• In the vSphere Web Client, you see a similar error:
  • Invalid configuration for device '2'.

Note: The above device number may be different from '2'

In /var/log/vpxa.log on the host that attempts the OVF/OVA import, you may see a similar message:

[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS] info vpxd[16006] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=<VCD_UUID>;activity=urn:uuid:<ACTIVITY_UUID>] [VpxLRO] -- ERROR lro-72155 --  -- VmprovWorkflow: vim.fault.InvalidDeviceSpec:
--> Result:
--> (vim.fault.InvalidDeviceSpec) {
-->    faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null, 
-->    faultMessage = <unset>, 
-->    property = "VirtualVideoCard.videoRamSizeInKB", 
-->    deviceIndex = 2
-->    msg = "Invalid configuration for device '2'."
--> }

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

• VMware Cloud Director for Service Provider 8.20.x
• VMware Cloud Director for Service Provider 9.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

This issue occurs because vSphere 6.7 incorrectly attempts to validate that the Video Memory does not exceed 128 MB in size. However, with hardware versions 14 and later, the SVGA device raised the maximum value for svga.vramSize to allow guests to set modes using up to 256MB of video memory.

Hardware Features Available with Virtual Machine Compatibility Settings

Resolution

This issue is resolved in vSphere 6.7 Update 1.

Workaround:
If you are unable to upgrade at this time you can work around this issue by editing the VM or OVF configuration file.

Edit the virtual machine

1. Connect to the ESXi hos the virtual machine (VM) resides on.
2. Navigate to were the VM is located
3. Open the VM configuration file with this command: vi vm_name.vmx
4. Look for the svga.vramSize entry and increase the available memory.

Example: svga.vramSize = "134217728"

5. Save and close the file.

Edit the OVF file

Edit the OVF file in a plain text editor and make the following change:

Original value:

Item ovf:required="false">

        <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>false</rasd:AutomaticAllocation>

        <rasd:ElementName>video</rasd:ElementName>

        <rasd:InstanceID>10</rasd:InstanceID>

        <rasd:ResourceType>24</rasd:ResourceType>

        <vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="videoRamSizeInKB" vmw:value="262144"/>

        <vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="enable3DSupport" vmw:value="true"/>

      </Item>

 

New Value:

 <vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="videoRamSizeInKB" vmw:value="128000"/>

        <vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="enable3DSupport" vmw:value="true"/>

      </Item>

Additional Information

• Cloning a virtual machine fails with the error: Invalid configuration for device device_number
• "Invalid Configuration for Device 0" error powering on / Cloning virtual machine