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I need to run vsca 6.7 (for a small project, regarding the vCenter itself, and not really needing to insall any VM on it).

I tried to install VCSA6.7 as a VM on my VMworkstation, but my home computer lacks the needed resources for it to run properly, and whenever I try to run it - my computer crashes.(I followed these instructions for installing vcsa 6.7 on my VMworksation: https://masteringvmware.com/how-to-install-vcsa-6-7-in-vmware-workstation-step-by-step/)

At this point, I decided to try and install VSCA on AWS as a VM, and importing the OVA file as an AMI. I folllowed the instructions here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vm-import/latest/userguide/vmimport-image-import.html, https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/import-server-ec2-instance/ and managed to upload the OVA file, but failed to import it as a VM due to an error: "ClientError: Disk validation failed [OVF file parsing error: Found a disk in DiskSection of OVF but without corresponding entry in References.]"

Is it possible to import the VCSA6.7 OVA file as an AMI? If so, what steps am I missing?

Further details of the steps I went through:

  • An s3 Bucket was created in my AWS account.
  • Successfully installed and configured the AWSCLI.
  • Created an IAM role named vmimport.
  • Attached an IAM policy named "vmimport" to the IAM role to grant permissions.
  • The image was successfully uploaded to the s3 bucket.
  • used the EC2 import-image command with the following parameters: aws ec2 import-image --description "vcsa6.7" --disk-containers file://"...\containers.json". the command returns no error (and a valid output)
  • when running the describe-import-image-tasks with the parameter: aws ec2 describe-import-image-tasks --import-task-ids import-ami-xxxxxxxxxxx the output is:
    "ImportImageTasks": [
        {
            "Description": "vcsa6.7",
            "ImportTaskId": "import-ami-xxxxxxxxxxx",
            "SnapshotDetails": [],
            "Status": "deleted",
            "StatusMessage": "ClientError: Disk validation failed [OVF file parsing error: Found a disk  in DiskSection of OVF but without corresponding entry in References.]",
            "Tags": []
        }
    ]
}

(task ID censured deliberately)

Sapir Schneider
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1 Answers1

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I ran into this on a different ova but got the same "ClientError: Disk validation failed [OVF file parsing error: Found a disk in DiskSection of OVF but without corresponding entry in References.]".

Try this:

  1. Untar the .ova to get at the files inside (tar xf <filename.ova>)
  2. Modify the .ovf and remove all the "Disk"s in the "DiskSection" you don't want. These are options for when you deploy to VMware - you get a nice interactive session in VMware to choose disk size, but that doesn't really make sense in AWS world. The "Disk" in "DiskSection" must point to the "File" in your "References" section. I haven't opened up a VCSA ova in a few years but I recall they formerly used a single disk. So adjust your selection here in the .ovf xml file and that's the disk size your AMI will have after conversion.
  3. Use sha1sum to recalculate the checksum on your .ovf file as you just modified it
  4. Replace the .ovf checksum in the .mf file with the checksum you just generated
  5. Tar up all your files into a new .ova (tar cf Newfile.ova *.vmdk *.mf *.ovf)- AWS did not seem to care the tar format and accepted my OSx's default tar options.
  6. Push your Newfile.ova to S3
  7. Update containers.json with the Newfile.ova
mrhhug
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