IBM Support

Virtual Machine Disk file is compressed in PureApplication System image OVA packages

Troubleshooting


Problem

The Virtual Machine Disk (.vmdk) included in the OVA package for an image downloaded from PureApplication System may not be usable with tools that can normally work with virtual machine disk files. Unzipping the virtual machine disk file may resolve the problem.

Symptom

Extracting the .vmdk file from an OVA package for a PureApplication System image and loading the .vmdk into a tool may yield the following errors:

Unable to retrieve disk information. The file specified is not a virtual disk.
Unable to change virtual machine power state: The file specified is not a virtual disk.

Cause

The .vmdk file included in PureApplication System images is often compressed or zipped. The file needs to be unzipped to be compatible with tools that manipulate .vmdk files.

Diagnosing The Problem

Use the Unix file command to see information about the format of the .vmdk file.

The sample output below shows a .vmdk file that is compressed.

file *.vmdk

RHEL61-64.vmdk: gzip compressed data, was "RHEL61-64.vmdk", from Unix, last modified: Mon Feb 3 17:36:38 2014, max compression



Resolving The Problem

Unzip the .vmdk before using it with virtual machine disk tools. Note that this strips the vmdk extension from the file names.

gunzip *.vmdk -S vmdk

Rename the files back to *.vmdk

mv RHEL61-64. RHEL61-64.vmdk

[{"Product":{"code":"SSM8NY","label":"PureApplication System"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU053","label":"Cloud & Data Platform"},"Component":"--","Platform":[{"code":"PF025","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"1.1.0.2;1.1.0.3;1.1.0.4;2.0;2.0.0.1","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"","label":""}}]

Document Information

Modified date:
15 June 2018

UID

swg21687755

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