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

Posted on March 12th, 2008 in esx, esx3.5, how to, hp, services, vmetc.com by Rich

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.

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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

Blade Power Calculators

Posted on March 3rd, 2008 in blades, blogs, how to, hp, ibm, partner, services by Rich

Aaron Delp’s BladeVault.info site reports about calculators from HP and IBM that can help you plan for power when considering physical server consolidation by implementing blades. IBM’s calculator is a downloadable .msi while HP’s is an online calculator. HP also offers a downloadable offline version which has limited functionality compared to the online tool. IBM’s calculator is not just limited to blades as it computes power figures for all x series servers.

Virtual Iron partners with Platespin, IBM, HP and Dell for SMB opportunities

Posted on November 24th, 2007 in blades, dell, hp, ibm, platespin, virtual iron by Rich

Packages including server hardware, Virtual Iron 4.0 and implementation services are now being offered from IBM and HP. Virtual Iron has also signed a reseller agreement with Dell. The combination of these new partnerships is positioning the VMware alternative as a highly visible choice for SMBs looking to migrate to a virtual datacenter.

An article from SearchServerVirtualization.com, Virtual Iron, IBM, HP package virtualization on blades for SMBs, reports on Virtual Iron’s new SMB strategy: