Citrix OVA fails to import into vCenter

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Category : howto   vmware   troubleshooting


I wanted to pass along this tidbit of info that I learned today.

I was asked to deploy Citrix’s Merchandising Server 2.2 OVA (citrix-merchandising-server-2.2.0-2852_VMware.ova) and while trying to import it into vcenter, I ran into a problem. The import would seem to move along fine – until it got to about 96%, then it would fail with the error:

“Failed to deploy OVF package: The request was aborted: The request was canceled.” Recent Tasks shows “The task was canceled by a user.”

A quick google search landed me on this Citrix Knowledgebase page. This was exactly my issue – down to the “Invalid Certificate” message in the OVF import wizard.

The post definitely seemed hopeful, and ultimately, I tried “besemann’s” method. This involved me opening the OVA with 7zip and removing the certificate.

Here’s the steps I took. 1) Opened Windows Explorer, browsed to the location of the OVA file. 2) Right-Clicked the OVA and chose to open the OVA file in 7Zip. 3) I browsed to the “.cert” file and then deleted it. 4) Reattempt the import.

While this method did not seem to help the last commentor on the post, it resolved my issue on the first try. I got the OVA imported and all is rainbows and unicorns.


About Sam Aaron
Sam Aaron

Father, Husband, Geek. Workaholic.

Email : mail@micronauts.us

Website : http://micronauts.us

About Sam Aaron

Father. Husband. Geek. Workaholic. US Marine Corps Veteran.

Sam Aaron is a Senior Consultant in the Professional Services Organization for Entelligence, bringing over a decade of expertise in enterprise cloud automation and infrastructure. Sam has spent almost eleven years at VMware leading cloud automation initiatives using VCF Automation (formerly Aria Automation & vRA) and designing scalable, multi-tenant environments with VMware Cloud Director (vCD).

Sam holds multiple certifications including VCF-Architect 2024, VCIX-CMA, and dual VCPs (DCV & CMA), and is a recognized contributor to VMware’s certification exams. As a VMware Hands-On Lab (HOL) Captain and content author from 2015-2025, Sam played a key role in educating and mentoring the global VMware community. He helped to create and develop the automation challenge and troubleshooting labs for VMworld and global virtual forums.

When Sam is not working, he has several hobbies, among these are 3D printing Star Wars robots and turning them into animatronics.

Launched in April 2010, micronauts is Sam's online presence. Here, he has been blogging and sharing knowledge with the virtualization community. This blog acts as a central repository to retain the resolutions and other trivial knowledge that Sam has discovered.

** No information provided here was reviewed or endorsed by VMware by Broadcom, Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter. All information here are opinions based on Sam's personal experience. Use this knowledge at your own risk. **

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