How can I open a .ova file?

thanks djohn11 and ericathorne,

Downloaded and installed the VMWare player and it did not open the .ova file and I got an error when I tried to open the virtual machine image:

Error while converting to a virtual machine: Failed to query source for information.

I also downloaded and installed the VMWare converter and tried to convert the .ova file but got an error:

The file selected is a virtual appliance(.ovf/.ova), not a VMWare Workstation or other VMWare Virtual machine (.vmx). Virtual appliance sources are not supported.

I have been told if I try to open the file from a machine with vmware installed I could probably import the virtual image but I do not have a computer with vmware loaded.

I only have a laptop and I am trying to open this virtual machine file to get practice using the appliance that it is virtualizing.

I downloaded this from vmware.com:

Binaries
Converter Installer for Windows
Version 4.0.1 | 161434 - 05/21/09       Binary (.exe) (103 MB)
An executable that contains all Converter 4.0.1 GA software components for Windows.

MD5SUM: 35f22a3b40b114d70cdbda2d5056c10f(¹)

The errors posted are from an installation of 4.0.1

Maybe vmware execs or marketing were planning to have that capability to open ova files but when the final version came out it got cut for some reason.

If I had received any other type of error message then I might think of troubleshooting but the error seems to explicitly indicate ova is not supported.

The file selected is a virtual appliance(.ovf/.ova), not a VMWare Workstation or other VMWare Virtual machine (.vmx). Virtual appliance sources are not supported.

Actually OVF/OVA are open standard formats which are supposed to work with all Hypervisors (Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX)

Maybe I could ask the vendor to convert the ova file to a vmware image?

Seems to me it would not be difficult and then I could open the image using the free vmware player.

I just found an ovf tool on vmware website and I will download and try that.

http://www.vmware.com/downloads/eula.do;JSESSIONID_DWNP=3fybLJtBVGrBhvg5hQLJmnRMf6DwvcKD5v1QwCs3FBD3WXdW2GpJ!-192901114

try that ovf tool from VMware.

Failing that try VM Converter Standalone edition.

Failing that, you might have better luck with MS HyperV...  see if you can import it as a VM.

Best bet.. the source file may be corrupt, get the vendor to convert it so you dont waste your time and effort.

HTH

I was able to convert the ova file to an vmx file using the ovf tool.

The tool is command line so I used the command: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool BIGIP-10.1.0.3341.1084.ova c:\f5.vmx

I copied the ova file to the directory that contained the ovftool.exe and added a destination directory and filename.

So the tool created f5.vmx in the root of the C: directory.

The format of the command is ovftool then source file and finally destination directory and filename.

After converting the file to a vmx file I was able to double click on it and vmware player opened the virtual machine.

I can now practice tasks on a simulated appliance.

:) Nice to know that you issue has been resolved,

sweet az.. so the OVF Tool did the trick.

OVF tool helped me as well. VMWare converter doesnt seem to be able to convert ova files.