UUID clone possible?

[michaelryancook]

Hi all,

I'm under the gun timewise so my searching was cut short. We had an issue with a host that left our VMs running but showing as invalid. Nothing on VMware worked to resolve so our last resort was to remove from inventory, browse the datastore and re-add to inventory. My understanding is that the UUID will have changed which will result in a full backup instead of incremental and same for backup copy job and replication job. Is there anyway to "trick" Veeam into seeing this VM as the same VM since it really is?

TIA

[michaelryancook]

I am thinking I could do this set the uuid.bios in the vmx file to match the old one. Unless there is an easier way.

[michaelryancook]

Or maybe it's vc.uuid that I need to edit?

[michaelryancook]

What worked for me was to create a temp job with the VM added with the new ID. Then I ran a query to determine the object_id of the "new" VM and finally updated the object_id in the original job. I am guessing CBT will not work and I will have a full backup but this should allow me to not have to start a new chain.

[VladV]

Veeam identifies the VM by its Moref id not UUID. Should you need to remap the new ID to the VMs in the VBR database, contact support and they will assist you in doing so. Just be sure that after you import them from the datastore you do not run backup jobs or replication jobs until the mapping is done.

[foggy]

Vlad is spot on and there's an existing thread regarding that. However, if you're ok with a full run, you can just re-add VMs and map jobs to existing backups, the chain will be resumed.

[VladV]

However, if you're ok with a full run, you can just re-add VMs and map jobs to existing backups, the chain will be resumed.

I was always under the impression that if you re-add the VM it will be considered a new VM just with the same name, thus it will have the retention policy applied to it and will start from 1 as retention points. The original VM will be considered deleted and the "deleted vm' retention policy will be applied to it. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[foggy]

Correct. However, the actual chain of backup files will be the same.

[michaelryancook]

Thanks guys. I saw that thread but didn't have time to contact support before our next backup. I ended up with re-adding the VMs and having a full run.