I was trying to import an OVF/OVA template to one of my lab environments. But unfortunately this was not possible because of an error:
In this environment we are using Folders to organize the datastores. See the screenshot below:
This works for most of the time but when you want to import an OVF/OVA template you have to give up your folder structure to enable the OVF template. This is a small bug in vCenter Server 5.1. See KB2045635 for more details.
This is a small quote from the KB article:
This is a known issue affecting VMware vCenter Server 5.1.
Try one of the following workarounds:
- Use vSphere Client to deploy.
Open the vSphere Client and use it to deploy the OVA/OVF file.- Use Web Client to deploy.
If the datastore is in a folder, remove it from the folder and try to deploy.
In this case I had to move the SDRS cluster and the datastores attached to this SDRS cluster from the yellow folder to the root folder inside the Storage view of the vSphere web client.
Now I was able to deploy the OVF/OVA template.