How to deploy the VirtualBox LibreNMS OVA into VMware ESXI

This all started when I wanted to quickly deploy an instance of LibreNMS as I hadn’t used it in a long time. I totally forgot that the OVA is virtual box only image. Now I don’t have any issues doing the CLI install as it’s short, but it irked me that this didn’t work. I thought, how hard could this be? Turns out, it was really hard. It took a lot of trial and error for me.

Here is how to do it with ESXI 6.7.

Pre-reqs:

1. Download the virtual box OVA from the LibreNMS site
2. Download the Vmware OVF Tool (it’s free, Google it)
3. 7zip to extract the original OVA package

Download the image, and install both software before continuing.

The actual conversion:

1. Extract the OVA from Libre into a folder via 7zip.
2. Delete the .mf file as it will invalidate the package
3. Edit the .ovf, find “virtualbox-2.2” and replace with “vmx-07”
4. Now we need to edit the storage controller in the same file, find both of the SATA Controllers and delete them. (Delete the whole <item> block for both). Here is what you should delete:

Replace both with just this one entry.

      

        0
        IDE Controller
        IDE Controller 1
        3
        5

Note: You can optionally change the memory and vCPU allocation in this file as well, or do it later, or never.

Save it the file.

Now install let’s convert it with the OVF tool you downloaded and installed.

5. open a command prompt or powershell window and browse to it’s directory.
cd “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool”

Now run the tool against the current package, and convert it to a .ova

6. ./ovftool.exe –lax “<PATH TO THE EXTRACT FOLDER .OVF” “PATH TO NEW .OVA”

Note: In my case I used powershell so I needed to run the OVF tool with “./ovftool.exe”. Also, the –lax options is to suppress warnings that could stop the conversion.

Now you’re left with this converted OVA file, you can delete the OVF and VMDK.

Import the OVA into ESXi.

Once complete, you can optionally increase the memory and or vCPU on the VM.

Here’s how it looks like in Vmware, notice the vm version, let’s start it.

Now just login with the librenms/CDne3fwdfds

If you want vmware tools installed just run “sudo yum install open-vm-tools -y” and reboot.

Now you can run “ip address” to get the IP, then browse to it and login with librenms/D32fwefwef

With all of this effort, it makes sense to just do the manual install as it’s easier. But if you wanted to, now you could use this method as well.