I have been trying to export an OVF template using the vSphere Client Version 4.1.0 Build 258902 of a VM from an ESXi server running 4.1.0 Build 260247 using a licensed version of vSphere 4 Standard. On some of my VMs, I can export them fine. However, I have a couple that timeout. For the ones that fail, I get the popup progress dialog that provides esitmates of time, etc., and it proceeds for a time and them just times out. It gets about 35% done before I get the error "Failed to export Virtual Machine: The operation timed out". The time of duration of my last try was about 16.5 minutes.
The image I am having problems with as provisioned storage of 204 GB, and used storage of 10.63 GB. Guest OS is Ubuntu 10.04.2 64 bit, but I doubt that is the issue. VM version is 7. CPU 3 and memory is 4 GB. I stopped the VM before exporting it, and it does not have any snapshots yet taken of it.
I have noticed a couple other threads asking for help on this topic with no answers, so I have started another thread to hopefully get somebody's notice. There seem to be a few others out there with this issue.
I would download the files directly via browsing the datastore, but that seems to take a crazy amount of time to do ... literally hours and hours.
Here is a section of the system logs:
<version>657</version>
[ :QuickInf:P:16] 2011-04-15 13:18:52.610 Current Memory Usage (gc/virtual/physical/paged): 21.271016/566.923264/189.149184/161.140736
[viclient:SoapTran:W:21] 2011-04-15 13:18:57.363 Invoke 1339 Finish WaitForUpdates on PropertyCollector:session[5212368b-16bc-8738-4b84-7fb725fe7fef]52855471-0a5a-fa3f-e500-ba80952e0ade [192.168.30.6] - Serial:0.000, Server:899.974
Suppressed: VirtualInfrastructure.Soap.MethodInvocationSoapImpl: The request failed because the remote server '192.168.30.6' took too long to respond. (The command has timed out as the remote server is taking too long to respond.)
[viclient:Error :W:21] 2011-04-15 13:18:57.363 ConnectionError occurred while executing WFU
VirtualInfrastructure.Exceptions.RequestTimedOut: The request failed because the remote server '192.168.30.6' took too long to respond. (The command has timed out as the remote server is taking too long to respond.)
at VirtualInfrastructure.Soap.SoapServiceWrapper.DoInvokeSync(ManagedObject mo, MethodName methodName, Object[] parameters, Int32 timeoutSecs)
at VirtualInfrastructure.Soap.SoapTransport.VirtualInfrastructure.Transport.InvokeMethod(ManagedObject mo, MethodName methodName, Object[] pars)
at VirtualInfrastructure.ManagedObject.InvokeMethod(MethodName methodName, Object[] pars)
at Vmomi.Core.PropertyCollector.WaitForUpdates(String version)
at VirtualInfrastructure.Updates.PollerDispatcherImpl.ExecuteSingleWFU()
at VirtualInfrastructure.Updates.PollerDispatcherImpl.PollWaitForUpdates()
System.Net.WebException: The command has timed out as the remote server is taking too long to respond.
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---