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Failed to deploy template: The virtual disk is either corrupted or not a supported format

PostDateIcon March 12th, 2008 | PostAuthorIcon Author: Rich Brambley

updated 03.13.08 – Unfortunately I declared victory too soon on this issue. I got a status update this week and the customer can deploy from template in some scenarios but is still getting the same error at times. The HP SIM agents are still turned off and have not been ruled out as part of the problem, but IBM has provided a recommended design and they have made the changes.

As Brian points out in his comment the customer has a multiple IBM SVC design in front of multiple storage devices.

======original post below =======================

Last week I helped a customer resolve an issue where whenever they deployed a new VM from a template the job would fail with the error “Failed to deploy template: The virtual disk is either corrupted or not a supported format” We were troubleshooting numerous ESX servers and the problem was the same on all the hosts. The template was fine. We changed it back to a VM and turned it on without issue. The vmtools and virtual hardware were up to date.

Surprisingly the Virtual Center error message was not well indexed on Google. I was scratching my head until I stumbled across the VMware Communities thread


Creating server from template fails …. Turns out that they were running HP SIM agents on the Service Console of all the ESX hosts, and as soon as we turned the SIM agents off we were able to successfully deploy templates again. As of this writing I do not have an official resolution from HP for the customer

The VMware forum thread also links to a HP forum thread about additional issues with HP VMM (SIM is included) causing VMs to be powered off after they are backed up by VCB. One of the replies in the HP forum hints that the HP agents on the console are locking the storage resources, and that the issue has been surfacing as various different problems for about a year. The last entry in the HP forum (Feb 13, 2008) is a reply from an admin who just updated to HPSIM 5.2 and VMM 3.1 but that issues still remain.

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PostCategoryIcon Posted in esx, esx, how to, hp, services, vmetc.com | PostTagIcon Tags: , , , , , ,
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  • I am getting this error while deploying a new virtual desktop pool (VMware View3).

    The problem is that this is supposed to be a bog standard 3 host environment with storage on an EMC CX300.
  • Well, after the fix it went well for a while but that was probably because of the lack of deploying load on the servers/storage. When I enabled provisioning on a desktop pool of 30 this morning the problem was back around desktop number 10.

    Because I don't use a non-persistent pool I can work around the issue but it has not gone away.
  • MartinjnL,

    Thanks for keeping us updated.
  • To reply on my own comment: it could have something to do with the fact that I made a snapshot of the template I used for these desktops. With a new template so far no problems.
  • Martijn,

    Glad to see you figured it out .. sorta.
  • Unfortunately, with an entirely new template I got the same error again a couple of minutes ago.

    Will update when I know more
  • Hi Mark,

    thank you for this information, my svc installtion is 4.2.1, too (in front of a DS4700).
    I found out, the customer had forgotten to disable automount on the vcb-server. As soon as the customer runs again into migration-problems I'll post it here.

    PLZ let us know if the SVC-Update did the fix.

    Thank you in advance


    Urs
  • Mark Pyfrom
    We ran in this here at middlbury as well. I think we found a workaround.

    (running svc 4.2.1, ibm ds3400)

    if you set up your templates vdisk to be in a managed disk group that contains only on mdisk. The problem went away for us. The moment we added two mdisks we started to get this issue.

    we plan on updating to 4.3.1, which includes some "changes" to the way it handles locking. But exactly what, I don't know.

    Mark
  • Urs Weber
    I also ran into this error, while cold-migrating several machines.
    ESX 3.5 Update3, VMs created under 3.0.2.
    All stores are mapped through IBM SVC (V4.2.?).

    Any new informations concerning this issue?

    Thanx
  • Bill, John,

    Sorry but I still have no definitive resolution for this. I suspect that SCSI reservations are the issue, so here are some things to investigate.

    Are there any errors in the /var/log/vmkwarning log on the ESX host?

    How many active VMs do you have on the LUN where the template is stored? Also on the LUN where the new VM is deployed? If more than 8 - 10 VMs can you spread the VMs out across more LUNs?

    How many ESX hosts are accessing the LUNs? If more than 8 can you change your ESX cluster design?

    If you an post any log errors here I will try to research more for you.

    If VMware Support figures out your issue please comment back here for other readers.

    Thanks.
  • Bill
    I'm getting this message when moving anything to or from any of our datastores on san lun's. Have you figured out anything further on this? Google has nothing at all in this case, I'm about to contact VMWare support.
  • John
    I am also get this message when trying to clone WIN2k3. This was built on ESX 3.5 server
  • Chris
    I just received this message too. I have a Win2K3 VM that was built in ESX 3.0.2, then moved to a 3.5 server. The tools have been updated, the server runs fine. I get the "corrupted or not a supported format" message when attempting to clone it. We are on IBM servers with IBM Storage. No HP involved. We are, however, behind "a multiple SVC design with multiple storage devices" and cloning from one LUN to another.
  • After contacting Brian I found out we are talking about the same customer's issue. I also got an update from the customer, and the error did not go away completely like previously reported. I am updating the post to reflect the customer's status with this issue.
  • Brian Whitman
    Interesting, I saw another issue recently with the HP SIM agents in the service console. In this case the customer was using HP servers, IBM storage and IBM SVC (SAN Volume Controller). Copying data from LUN to LUN and VM migrations were failing.
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