I recently ran into an issue with the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.5 installer. When I proceeded to Step 5, “Set up appliance VM” I received the error:

“A problem occurred while reading the OVF file…Error: ovftool is not available.”

After some research, it turns out that macOS Sierra (10.12.x) is not supported and, of course, that is the operating system of my laptop. I found a blog post from Emad Younis that outlines two possible options for working around this error.

I tried both options. Option 1 did not work for me, but Option 2 did. I’d like to take a minute and demonstrate step-by-step what I did to proceed with the VCSA deployment.

On the deployment wizard error, I selected Installer log.

Quickly read through the log and find the error regarding the ovftoolCmd, it will state the directory that the installer is searching for the tool set. Copy that directory, sans /vcsa/ovftool/mac/ovftool.

Launch the Terminal utility and type the open command for Finder to open that directory.

For example:

open /private/var/folders/j8/ttwss5yx6cqf0flb5lrj_hww0000gn/T/AppTranslocation/

As mentioned before, leave off everything from /vcsa/ and on.

When that directory opens in Finder, you’ll notice that is it empty…therein lies the problem!

Copy the vcsa folder into this directory.

Once the vcsa folder has successfully copied, you should be able to go back to the macOS installer, press Back, and then hit Next to go back to Step 5.

You should now be able to select the deployment size options and successfully proceed with the VCSA deployment.