I wanted to run a virtual Citrix License server in my LAB.

Unfortunately Citrix only provides the VPX License Server in XenServer format (.xva). If you want to run the VPX on VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V you need to convert it first.

The option to convert a Xen Virtual Appliance to OVF format was removed in XenConvert 2.4.1. So for a conversion you need version 2.3.1.

Here are the direct download links:

However when I tried to convert the downloaded VPX (Citrix_License_Server_VPX_v11.10.0_Build_12002.xva) I got the error "Failed to decode tar header record":

Failed to decode tar header record

 

I inspected the downloaded xva file with a Hex Editor:

image

I recognized the ZIP header signature so I renamed the file to .zip and unpacked it. Inside the ZIP was another xva with the same name (Citrix_License_Server_VPX_v11.10.0_Build_12002.xva).

This file ran successfully through the converter:

Conversion was successful!

I created a VM in Hyper-V from the VHD that XenConvert produced, one problem remains however: the VPX tries to boot with a Xen-Dom0 kernel which fails to boot on Hyper-V:

Error 13: invalid or unsupported executable format

I don’t have a fix for that issue (yet), so this might be continued…