Object not found when VM is moved to new infrastructure

[johhen1]

Support Case # 03144094

We have a project where we need to move Hyper-V VM's from one domain to another.

SCVMM
OldVMM.olddomain.local
NewVMM.newdomain.local

HYPER-V Host
OldHost.olddomain.local
NewHost.newdomain.local

Virtual Machine
VM1.oldomain.local

We already have a PowerShell script in place to move VM1 to new location without any issues. We have existing backups of VM1, both full and incremental.
Both OldVMM.olddomain.local and NewVMM.newdomain.local are added to the same Veeam Backup & Replication server. Backup from both domain works without any issues.

We have a Backup_job_1 that used to take daily backups of VM1. If we try start it once VM1 is moved to new domain, we get "Object was not found", which makes perfectly sense since VM1 is not on the same host/vmm/domain anymore.
So we need to tell Veeam to get VM1 from NewVMM.newdomain.local and NewHost.newdomain.local instead.

Problem with Veeam is that it will handle this as a completly new VM since VMid inside Veeam database is different once it is added from new location. This will cause Veeam to create a new full backup and it does not continue on the existing "backup-chain". We want to avoid making a new Full backup of every VM in the new domain.

So I have been looking into how to tell Veeam database that the VMid is the same as before, but no matter what I try I cannot get it to work.

Ref: https://www.veeam.com/kb2136 and https://www.veeam.com/kb1299. I know these articles applies to VMWare / vCenter, but the principle is the same for Hyper-V / VMM.

I managed to change VMid once before when we changed VMM server, and it worked!, but this time it is more difficult since we are also changing more variables (storage, host, domain).

Suggestions? Anyone ever tried something like this?

-johhen1

[Mike Resseler]

Hi johhen1,

First: Welcome to our forums
Second: I could give you a few suggestions, but they are quite dangerous to do and you might loose valid backups. I honestly would prefer that you go to support with this. If this is a valid scenario for Hyper-V, those are the ones that can do it (and keep it supportable ). If it is indeed easy to do, then I will ask them to write a KB about it, review it and so on...

So please do this together with support, post the case ID here and the outcome after talking to support.

Last note: I know you say the principle is the same, but for some reason my head tells me that it will be either not or much more difficult on Hyper-V in combination with SCVMM, but fingers crossed

Mike

[johhen1]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your reply.

So far the answer from support is that this is impossible and changing VM ID's in the database is not supported.

That is not quite the information that I am looking for. We do understand that doing changes might loose backups or break a backup job. We do NOT test this on backup job of vms that are in Production. We also make sure to have a backup of the Veeam database and config before doing any changes in case something goes wrong.

What I am after is a better understanding of the how Veeam works with VM ID's, Storage, Hyper-v clusters and hosts. The goal is to make proof of concept of a VM backup chain to continue with incremental backups after moving it to new infrastructure.

johhen1

[Mike Resseler]

The problem with the VM ID is that this is what is used to track the VM. I probably won't be able to help you much more (I am assuming you already figured out how to get inside the database and track the VM ID)


If you then check (OLD VMs first: Get-HypervVMUUID -ComputerName "hostname" -VM "VMName", "VMName2") you should get the same values.
If you then do the same for the new VMs you should see the new ID. But I do foresee heavy problems because the config files will be different (as one example)

Sorry I can't help you more.