OVF Appliance Import failed

[imhotepson]

i tried to import a vmware fusion created OVF with virtualbox 4.3.10 and it failed withe the following error:
Error reading "/Appliance.ovf": Host resource of type "Other Storage Device (20)" is supported with SATA AHCI controllers only, line 47.

howto fix this, what do i have to change convert the OVF to ??

[mpack]

The error message is telling you what the issue is. Basically the OVF lists some weird disk drive type attached to an IDE controller, it needs to be on a SATA controller.

Personally I'd just (a) clone the main VMDK to VDI format (*), then (b) build a VM around the VDI.

(*) ps. Yes, I know that VirtualBox supports VMDKs. The point of cloning the disk is first to unpack the compression used by OVF-style VMDKs, and second to get the disk into the VDI format which is preferred by VirtualBox (there are some VirtualBox functions - such as resizing - that don't work on VMDK).

[ITfromScratch]

Thanks, mpack.

The OVF Tool created a .ovf file, a .mf file, and a .vmdk file all at once. I used the VBoxManage tool from within VirtualBox to convert the .vmdk file to a .vdi file and then built a new appliance using the .vdi file as the hard drive.

[viz]

If this is still actual or anyone, this happens do to slightly different format VMWare and VirtualBox are using to work with .ovf files. The answer is the following:

When you have .ovf file from VMWare, open it with any text/xml editor, and
1. replace word "ElementName" with word "Caption" in the whole file
2. replace "vmware.sata.ahci" with "AHCI"

Save and import to VirtualBox.

[Siotaro]

I've got exactly same issue as OP, I got like this message.
>Error reading "/Appliance.ovf": Host resource of type "Other Storage Device (20)" is supported with SATA AHCI controllers only, line 47.

@viz

Great! Your method works fine for me.
This is my environment bellow here.

* VMware(R) Workstation 12 Player
12.0.0 build-2985596
* Virtual Box 5.0.2 r102096

Using ovftool to convert .ovf format.
Apply your step1 and step2 to this .ovf file.
File->Import Appliance in Virtual Box Manager.
The import procedure is successfully finished.

Thanks a lots!

[Nonsanity]

Viz's edit trick for the .ovf file worked for me with one additional step: You will also need to remove the .mf file—if ovftool created one—or the import into VirtualBox will fail.

[stay fool]

If this is still actual or anyone, this happens do to slightly different format VMWare and VirtualBox are using to work with .ovf files. The answer is the following:

When you have .ovf file from VMWare, open it with any text/xml editor, and
1. replace word "ElementName" with word "Caption" in the whole file
2. replace "vmware.sata.ahci" with "AHCI"

Save and import to VirtualBox.

it's seem to be nessary to recompute the SHA1 for .ovf, and then recorrect it in .mf file

[klaus]

This is another case where a bug survived 2 years longer than it should, simply because no one created a bug ticket. Found this thread when searching for reports after fixing the issue. Keep in mind that there are so many forum posts that the developers can't possibly keep track of them. If they would read them all there would be no time left to improve VirtualBox. That's why we have a bug tracker.

[dobob]

Did this get added to the bug tracker? I'm not seeing it there...

[klaus]

Sorry if that sounds cheeky, but why should we report the bug ourselves after the fact? It's fixed in VirtualBox 5.0.22 (mentioned in the changelog).