I recently had this error ” This OVF package uses features that are not supported when deploying directly to an ESX host.  The OVF package requires support for OVF Properties.  Detils: Line 614: Unsupported element: ‘Property’ ” when trying to deploy NetApp’s Data ONTAP Edge 8.1.1 Evaluation to my ESXi 5.1 host.

The fix is easy and is described in the error message: deployment is not supported directly to an ESXi host – you must deploy through vCenter.  A pain if you don’t have vCenter installed, but unfortunately this is the only fix.

Note – OVA files are simply compressed files containing the .OVF and the .VMDK virtual disk files, so simply extracting the .OVA file (I used 7-Zip) will allow you to see the .OVF file and the properties which are not supported.

When I deployed it through vCenter it just worked – perfectly.

Further information is available in this NetApp Community Forum thread.