Encountered an interstesting issue when importing an OVF templated created from a symantec backup virtualmacine. The VM itself had an VMX file and the required vhdk disks. Converted these using the OVF tool to get a working VM to import. OVF tool creates a few new files to accompany the vmdk disks and has some information about the VM like it’s name and so on.
When importing this OVF to our VMware environment, I got an error after finishing the wizard than A specified parameter was not correct. Nothing more than that, nothing specifying what the real reason was behind it. I found a VMware KB article about this issue stating that one line in the OVF file was incorrect for the import procedure to succeed. To fix this issue, locate the following line in the .ovf file:
vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="tools.toolsUpgradePolicy" vmw:value="useGlobal"
and change it to the following
vmw:Config ovf:required="false" vmw:key="tools.toolsUpgradePolicy" vmw:value="manual"
Once this is done, you won’t be able to import the virtual machine as the import wizard will say that your Virtual Machine is corrupted. This is due to the fact that you just changed a file and the manifest file containing hash values no longer match to the changed .ovf file. To fix this, you will need to generate a new SHA1 value for the .ovf file and add this to your .mf file located in the same directory.
In an windows environemnt, you can download and install/run the OpenSSL Windows binary located here.
To generate a new sha1 value for the .ovf file, go to the installation directory of your OpenSSL and run the following command:
openssl sha1 filenameincludingpath
now copy this sha1 value to the mf file and import the ovf file successfully to your VMware environment.
