The issue we are seeing relates to the way in which we believe your CloudPlatform is parsing XML data in the OVF file contained within an OVA container use for the deployment of virtual machines.

You may see and instant of the OVA that fails to import into CloudPlatform Business Manager by navigating to our download pages at https://www.pexip.com/download and looking at the OVA in the âManually deploy a new Conferencing Nodeâ section. For your reference, the OVA we produce that is listed in the âDeploy a new Management Nodeâ, uses the more ânormalâ XML description, and CloudPlatform parses this with no issue.

Our use of XML namespaces (a standard part of XML: http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-names11-20060816/) is completely standard and also necessary in order to ensure the XML is generated in a controlled way. The namespaces are defined using the âxmlnsâ tag at the start of the file. You will see that we define âovfâ and âns0â to have exactly the same URI (please look at the XML from both the working Management node and non-working Conferencing node linked to previously). This means they have exactly the same semantics, and can be used interchangeably. However, due to some unknown reason, the Citrix systems are unable to parse this information correctly. If the parsing of the XML looks at the namespace prefix, rather than the namespace URI, then Citrix is not parsing the XML correctly.

We are not able to change the way we generate the OVF template, but we have had reports that manually editing the XML result in a OVA that can be imported, and once the VM has been deployed, things work as you would expect. We have recommended to our customers that they approach Citrix directly and requesting that you re-look at the parsing of the files, especially considering that the native XEN platform (including the Citrix XEN v6 On Prem Solution), VMware and all other OVF-parsing tools we have met successfully parse our XML.

We are seeing more and more customers look at cloud offerings to support their videoconferencing solutions using our platform. I therefore trust you will be able to create an internal technical issue for the Cloud Platform team, and that you may be able to resolve this matter to the mutual benefit of both Citrix and Pexip.