On this post we will describe an issue we recently had deploying BIG-IP VE versions 11, 12 and 13 on VMware ESXi 6.5.
Problem details
F5 BIGIP VE is failing to install on VMware ESXi 6.5 with error message “Failed to deploy VM: postNFCData failed: Capacity of uploaded disk is larger than requested” and “generic system failures”. On the few occasions the VM upload was successful, BIG-IP would boot and then get into a reboot loop with Kernel Panics.
Troubleshooting
This happens when we were using a browser to connect to ESXi 6.5. VMware Sphere client is not released anymore, the last release is for ESXi 6.0, so it is not officially supported for ESXi 6.5.
After some research and reading similar complains we found out the issue was not with the F5 VE, but with ESXi 6.5 and the clients (Host Client, vSphere Client, Browser, HTML5, etc).
Solution
The suggested workaround was to use OVFTool. This tool is a CLI utility that can be installed on Windows, Linux and MAC.
The way to run ovftool and parameters is shown below:
$ ovftool [parameter] source target
| Parameter | Function |
| -n / –name | Target VM name |
| -vf / –vmFolder | Folder for storing the VM |
| –acceptAllEulas | Automatically accept EULA |
| -ds / –datastore | Target datastore |
| -dm / –diskMode | Disk provisioning mode (for vSphere: thin, thick or eagerZeroedThick) |
| –net:NIC-name:portgroup | Network binding (portgroup is mapped to NIC name) |
| –ipProtocol | IP protocoll: IPv4, IPv6 |
| –prop | Assigning an OVA/OVF parameter (e.g. Root password) |
| –deploymentOption | Selecting a vApp configuration (if supported by template) |
| –powerOn | Turning on VM after provisioning |
The target locator needs to have a specific schema. Some examples for vSphere:
vi://myvcenter/mydatacenter/host/mycluster
vi://admin:admin@myvcenter/mydatacenter/host/mycluster
Additional examples can be found in the utility online help:
$ ovftool -h | less
$ ovftool -h locators | less
$ ovftool -h examples | less
The OVA/OVF source does not need to be stored on the local hard drive, it can also be downloaded from a web server (http://path, https://path) or FTP server (ftp://pfad).
After some try and error, we got with the right command for installing the BIG-IP VE:
ovftool –acceptAllEulas -dm=thin -n=”BIG-IP-LAB” –net:Management=”VM Network” –net:External=”VM Network” –net:Internal=”VM Network” –net:HA=”VM Network” /vmware/ISO/BIGIP-13.0.0.0.0.1645.ALL-scsi.ova vi://root@1.2.3.4
You just need to replace the OVA file name and path and IP address of your ESXi server to match your environment. You can also map the correct VMWare networks to the correct interfaces with the –net switch when you run the tool, or just assign all the interfaces to a Network and then later modify the interface settings depending on your network topology.
If you need any assistance or help installing Virtual Appliances on VMware, don’t hesitate to contact us.
SITC
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Sep 19, 2017, 8:11:58 PM9/19/17
to RCDevs Security Solutions — Technical
I get the error in the subject when attempting to deploy. It’s not a space issue on the hypervisor, I’ve tried it on 3 different datastore ranging from 465GB to 2TB. What I am seeing is that there is an issue with the OVF file and the size it has specified in it. I’ve been getting this issue slightly different language when i was using vsphere 5., but have upgraded the host to 6.5. For some reason it won’t deploy.
Any reccomendations on correct size to change within the ovf, or am I missing something?
Thanks!
SITC
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Sep 19, 2017, 8:28:47 PM9/19/17
to RCDevs Security Solutions — Technical
So I may have resolved my own issue — and for those who are wondering later: I used notepad to edit the .OVF file and changed the: <Disk ovf:capacity=»4″ to <Disk ovf:capacity=»702″
I may not understand this correctly, and if not someone can explain better than I in a reply, but I believe the «4» is setting the maximum capacity or size (not 100% sure which) of the VMDK file in Mb. By setting it to a size in Mb slightly larger than the actual VMDK file size it seems to have deployed without any further issues.
Hope this helps someone in the future.
francois…@rcdevs.com
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Sep 20, 2017, 11:02:23 AM9/20/17
to RCDevs Security Solutions — Technical
Hi SITC
The capacity is ovf:capacity=»4″ ovf:capacityAllocationUnits=»byte * 2^30″
which corresponds to 4 x 2^30 bytes or 4 Go
Perhaps your hypervisor misunderstand ovf:capacityAllocationUnits ?
francois…@rcdevs.com
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Sep 20, 2017, 2:55:43 PM9/20/17
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We’ve found the problem:
Our appliance on centos 6 works with 4Go, which is correct, but our appliance on centos 7 was configured also with 4Go and the HD uses 20Go
We’ve changed ovf:capacity to 20 and it works now.
Sean Pennington
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Sep 20, 2017, 3:21:09 PM9/20/17
to RCDevs Security Solutions — Technical
I will redeploy, with that number. Since getting it to deploy it isn’t taking the static IP, hopefully this is related.
Thanks for the pointer.
Best regards.
From: francois…@rcdevs.com
Sent: Sep 20, 2017 7:55 AM
To: RCDevs Security Solutions — Technical
Subject: [RCDevs Technical] Re: Failed to deploy VM: postNFCData failed: Capacity of uploaded disk is larger than requested
Thomas Brandtstaetter
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Sep 21, 2017, 6:07:27 PM9/21/17
to RCDevs Security Solutions — Technical
Hi,
hooking to the point: it isn’t taking the static IP:
We recently tried to install the CentOS 7 based VM an ran into another problem: it doesn’t take the IP via DHCP and while running through the install script, we couldn’t see the typical interaction flow that was usually offered with the CentOS 6 VM.
I will try to send the error report tomorrow, since I have to leave for a meeting now.
Maybe we better open another problem report. I just wanted to find a hook, after I read the comment below.
Thanks, Thomas
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Sean Pennington
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Sep 21, 2017, 6:42:52 PM9/21/17
to rcdevs-t…@googlegroups.com
I ended up reverting to CentOS6 install, which now has me to the webadm ui. I haven’t taken things any further at this point. It seems the centos7 appliance
setup is hosed in some way. Not sure how, but I can say that I did look at the network file and it was blank. No static IP settings listed.
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Did you try with vSphere web client?
I have also issues when using vSphere web client to deploy OVA.
to deploy OVA, I use sphere client (version from 5.5 is working) or ovftool (Mac OS X path):
/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/VMware OVF Tool/ovftool -dm=thin -ds=MyDataStore -n="MyF5" --net:External=F5-lab-external --net:HA=F5-lab-HA --net:Internal="F5-lab-internal" --net:Management="F5-lab-Mgmt" /F5/12.1.2/BIGIP-12.1.2.1.0.271.ALL-scsi.ova vi://root@1.2.3.4
for me it worked on the web gui client, try with both flash and hmtl5 and different browsers. it is kinda sad vmware made such a mess, but in the end it did work.
I get the same «Failed to deploy VM: postNFCData failed: Capacity of uploaded disk is larger than requested» on ESXi 6.5 Update 1 (Build 5969303) when trying to load BIGIP-11.6.3.0.0.3.ALL-scsi.ova.
The first 20GB vmdk file appears to load but the second 129GB Thin or Thick vmdk fails and triggers the error (I have 392GB of free VMFS space available). Failed using the following:
Chromium 63 on Ubuntu 17.10 / Firefox 58 on Ubuntu 17.10 / Firefox 58 on Windows 10
Loading the ova with ovftool works fine (Thanks everyone for pointing me in that direction).
From what I have read, the Flash client is only available in vCenter 6.5. Individual ESXi 6.5 servers only have the HTML5 client.
I have a single ESXi 6.5 server for my home lab, so I am using the HTML5 client.
I had to modify the examples above to get it to work. Here is a generic example for OSX
cd /Applications/VMware OVF Tool/
./ovftool —acceptAllEulas —noSSLVerify —skipManifestCheck -ds=»datastore» —diskMode=thin -n=»BIGIP-13.1.0.2.0.0.6″ —net:External=»VM Network» —net:Internal=»VM Network» —net:HA=»VM Network» —net:Management=»VM Network» —powerOn BIGIP-13.1.0.2.0.0.6.ALL-scsi.ova vi://root:»PASSWORD»@SERVER IP
FYI: The documentation for the OVFTool — https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/ovf420/ovftool-420-userguide.pdf
My example from Windows to vSphere 5.5:
"C:Program FilesVMwareVMware OVF Toolovftool.exe" --acceptAllEulas -st=ova -dm=thin -ds="NetApp_VM-Storage" -vf="folder" -n="BIGIP-13.0.0-0.0.ALL-scsi" --net:External="VLAN 1 External" --net:HA="VLAN 2 HA" --net:Internal="VLAN 3 Internal" --net:Management="VLAN 4 Mgmt" "C:UsersbobDownloadsBIGIP-13.0.0-0.0.ALL-scsi.ova" "vi://bob@//host/"
This is not nescessarily an error.
I have seen it on various machines. Not just F5 virtual machines.
Just pay attention wether or not the machine is actually deployed.