Use Replica as Main VM

[mattrgee]

Hi all,

I have moved 10 VM's from the an old ESXi host to a new ESX4 host, no SAN is being used just local storage. I moved the VMs by creating a replication job and replicating them from the old host to the new host. The old VMs are now shutdown on the old host and the replicated ones are up and running and in production.

Was this the correct way to do it?

It appears the production VM's could be easily deleted by browsing the replicas inside the Veeam software and choosing 'delete from disk'. How can I make the replicated VMs normal VMs? What files can be deleted that were associated with the replication and are no longer needed? Why are the VMs now in a folder could 'Veeam Backup' rather than being in the root of the vmfs folder?

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Mattgree,

You can choose "remove from replicas" option, this option is used when you want to remove records about replica files from the Veeam Backup configuration database, all references will be removed from the Veeam Backup & Replication console; however, all your replicated VMs will still reside on your target host. As for the "Veeam Backup" folder, it is the default destination folder on ESX hosts and it is automatically created by the job for storing replicated VMs.

Also please note, that just for moving VMs, you might have used Copy VM job, that is capable of copying running VMs (feature of Veeam Backup and Replication 4)

Thank you.

[mattrgee]

Ok thanks, it sounds like 'Copy' would have been the better option.

Looking at the target host, the VM files seem to exist in two locations:

1: vmfs\storage1\VeeamBackup

2: vmfs\4dg5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\VeeamBackup

It appears the VMs are running in location 1, is it therefore safe to delete the files in location 2? Could you tell me what location 2 is used for?

Thanks.

[Gostev]

Actually it is the same location, don't pay attention to folders with GUIDs.