VMWare OVA file

Question

I've received an .OVA file and I need to be aple to open/parse it.

When I try to open it with VMware player, I get the following error:

"Failed to open virtual machine: Failed to query source for information."

When I try to open it with the Converter standalone client I get:

"Unable to parse the OVF file"

The extension can be OVF or OVA so I did choose the right file tipe from the open file dialog.

If anyone had similar experience and solved it, please let me know. Thanks.

Solution 1

Have you tried unzipping the .OVA into an .OVF?

edit - found THIS, quite useful.

Solution 2

Question is >6 month old, but as I had the same problem; here is my solution:

Convert the .ova file to an .vmx with the VMWare ovftool: http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1013

The converted .vmx file can be executed with VMWare Player.

Comments

[John Murphy]

Two years on, this problem is still happening (even with brand-new VMWare appliances), and ovftool is still the solution.

[chrislovecnm]

ovf at times is a tar archive as well. You may try to tar xvf the file. Thanks for the answer it pointed me in the correct direction