While deploying a vCenter Operations Manager appliance a few days back, I was hit by the following error message (towards the end of its deployment):
Failed to deploy OVF package: The task was canceled by a user.
That was of course surprising given I didn’t cancel the task. Thinking it might be a glitch, I tried it again but the result was the same. Another thought was if the OVA was corrupt in some way. So, I computed the SHA-1 and MD5 hashes of the OVA file (using Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier) and they exactly matched the hash values mentioned on the download site.
For the sake of completeness, I should mention that I was using vCenter/ESX 5.5 Update 2 but it looks more like a packaging problem, as discussed here and here (possibly by the same person). The solution involves extraction and editing of the OVF file to change the CD-ROM type. Judging by the comments afterwards, it seems like a reliable method of fixing the problem. However, I wanted to find an easier way and the following worked for me:
- Extract the OVA to some accessible folder using an extraction utility e.g. 7Zip
- Deploy the appliance using the normal OVF deployment method
Surprisingly, this method has worked for me a couple of times, without requiring editing of any files i.e. it somehow gets around the problem with the package, preventing its deployment. I used the exact same file to extract the contents and deployment worked fine after that.
Hope this helps!
Hello, there.
Could you be more specific what is the “normal OVF deployment method” please?
Thanks!
Hi Adam
What I mean is once you’ve extracted the OVA into a folder, resulting in an OVF and its associated files, just use the “Deploy OVF Template…” option from the “File” or “Actions” menu (depending on C# or web-client).
Hope this helps!
What do you mean by “Extract the OVA to some accessible folder using an extraction utility e.g. 7Zip”? It is already extracted when downloaded from the VMware website.
Hi Kevin
When you download an OVA, it’s just one file. If you use a utility e.g. 7zip, it shows the contents inside, which you can then extract to a folder, just like any zip file.
What I mean is to extract the OVF and other related files from the OVA and then use the same OVF deployment method, to deploy the appliance. In my case, the problem didn’t appear once I used this workaround.
Ather
Thanks. Turns out my OVA file was corrupt. Trying to uncompress uncovered it. 🙂
Great result! 🙂
Hi Ather, The workaround did not help in my case.
Esxi Client 6. May be , I’ll have to create a template again and try.
That works. But I didn’t find any explanation about a cause of issue. I use official CoreOS OVA https://coreos.com/os/docs/latest/booting-on-vmware.html and faced the same problem.
Hi Ather,
I have used VMDK and OVF file to install VM still getting same error
Failed to deploy VM: postNFCData failed: IO error
Host ESXI version is 6.7
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