Your CPU does not support long mode. Use a 32bit distribution

I received this when starting a VM (in ovf) format downloaded from the VMware appliance marketplace. What I thought was odd was that this was on an already running ESX server.

Researching the background it appeared that by default Dell ship their 2900 Poweredge servers with virtualisation capabilities turned off (which suggests that none of the running vms on this particular server were using specific virtualisation features through hardware).

The solution was to power down all the vms running – boot into the 2900 bios and enable the virtualisation feature – simple as that and reboot.

The vm started without complaint.

In addition with regard to the ovf based format and the much more commonly distributed vmdk

How does VMDK compare to OVF?

VMDK is a file format that only encodes a single virtual disk from a virtual machine. A VMDK does not contain information about the virtual hardware of a machine, such as the CPU, memory, disk, and network information. A virtual machine may include multiple virtual disks or VMDKs. An administrator who wishes to deploy a virtual disk must then configure all of this information, often manually, using incomplete documentation.

The OVF format, on the other hand, provides a complete specification of the virtual machine. This includes the full list of required virtual disks plus the required virtual hardware configuration, including CPU, memory, networking, and storage. An administrator can quickly provision this virtual machine into virtual infrastructure with little or no manual intervention. In addition, the OVF is a standards-based, portable format that allows the user to deploy this virtual machine in any hypervisor that supports OVF

Bumptop on my other screens »« The hardware family of the OVF package is not supported – importing an ovf virtual machine

The hardware family of the OVF package is not supported – importing an ovf virtual machine

Okay – some background and some confusion.

The ovf format pops up when you are running ESX and select import virtual appliance and are given the options

Import from the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace
Import from file
Import from url

and you realise that all these options relate to an ovf packaged virtual machine.

According to VMware

What is OVF?

With the rapid adoption of virtualization, there is a great need for a standard way to package and distribute virtual machines. VMware and other leaders in the virtualization field have created the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), a platform independent, efficient, extensible, and open packaging and distribution format for virtual machines.

OVF enables efficient, flexible, and secure distribution of enterprise software, facilitating the mobility of virtual machines and giving customers vendor and platform independence. Customers can deploy an OVF formatted virtual machine on the virtualization platform of their choice.

With OVF, customers’ experience with virtualization is greatly enhanced, with more portability, platform independence, verification, signing, versioning, and licensing terms. OVF lets you:

Improve your user experience with streamlined installations
Offer customers virtualization platform independence and flexiblity
Create complex pre-configured multi-tiered services more easily
Efficiently deliver enterprise software through portable virtual machines
Offer platform-specific enhancements and easier adoption of advances in virtualization through extensibility

The portability and interoperability inherent in OVF will enable the growth of the virtual appliance market as well as virtualization as a whole.

So importing a machine in this way through Virtual Center (now Vcenter) client is a quick and easy way ( lets say nothing about the dearth of ovf format appliances on the VMware marketplace).

So where does the “The hardware family of the OVF package is not supported” error come from. I’ve seen reports of importing from VM Fusion vms but my issue arose when I got a Redhat EL4 VM with Oracle tools and database installed in it. When I ran Convertor on it – I ended up with an ESX VM with an error “unable to locate operating system”.

So I thought why not try the ovftool utility ?

Why not indeed ?

After checking that all was well with the vm by starting up in VMware workstation – it started fine

Downloaded the tool from here http://register.vmware.com/content/download-ovf-os.html and installing allowed me to run a conversion of the problematic vm as follows on a windows vista machine

ovftools c:\oracle.vmx c:\oracle.ovf

(note if your path has spaces enclose everything in double quotes)

the conversion of the vm will complete

Once finished I tried to import this ovf via the Vcenter client – and thats where the “The hardware family of the OVF package is not supported” is displayed. So what next.

Solution

Well I think this step may well work for other variants of the message. Use the converter tool to convert a virtual appliance !! This now gives me a booting working esx based vm.

I suspect this approach may be required for other problem vms.

Your CPU does not support long mode. Use a 32bit distribution »« How to delete "hidden" hidden devices

How to delete "hidden" hidden devices

When migrating various physical servers to virtual machines you may have issues with the original hardware – still hanging around. This can manifest itself in the complaint when you to try to configure a new virtual network card with the same ip address as the original physical hardware. The system may well complain that a card exists with those settings already. So you open device manager and view hidden devices but no sign of the offending card.

So the gotcha ?

Device Manager displays only non-Plug and Play devices, drivers, and printers when you click Show hidden devices on the View menu. Devices that you install that are not connected to the computer (such as a Universal Serial Bus [USB] device or “ghosted” devices) are not displayed in Device Manager, even when you click Show hidden devices.

WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior and display devices when you click Show hidden devices:
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
At a command prompt, type the following command , and then press ENTER:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Type the following command at the same command prompt, and then press ENTER:

start devmgmt.msc

So now you can dispose of the offending article

The hardware family of the OVF package is not supported – importing an ovf virtual machine »« HP 1015 printing multiple pages of print job on same page !!