Backing up VM's with VMDK's spread over multiple LUN's

[YoMarK]

Hi,

In our Vmware environment we have several VM's that have VMDK's spread over multiple LUN's(mostly large fileservers, exchange and databaseservers).
VirtualCenter does an annoying thing when creating a VM like this: all the VMDK's on different LUN's have the same filename. Veeam is then unable to replicate the VM:
"Unable to process "servername" VM because it has 2 or more virtual disks with the same VMDK file names. To process this VM, either rename virtual disk files, or use VCB backup mode."
I cannot use VCB, because the VM's need to be replicated to a separate environment. Besides, I think veeam should be able to do just about the same "trick" as storage migration(SVmotion) does: just create differently named (target)vmdk's in the same directory.

In the past i've been using Storage Migration, of manual editing/removing of the files to "solve" this "problem".

However, this is becoming more and more a problem...because of several migrations our environment is changing every day(And i'm the one kinda responsible for the veeam stuff ).

Is there a solution or workaround other then the ones mentioned above?

Thanks in advance!
--Mark

[Gostev]

Hi Mark, no - currently there is no workaround. But let me see check we can fix this in the upcoming release.

[dlove]

I get the same issue even with a job that backs up disk 0:0 only.

[ssimakov]

Darren, yes, this is a protection against excluding backed up disk and including another that will ultimately lead to corrupting the data in your backup.

[YoMarK]

Thanks for the response, hopefully this will be solved in a next release. I think that a lot of company's will have this issue, and i'm surprised that no one brought this up earlier(didn't find it on this forum).

[ssimakov]

Mark, actually some companies encounter this issue and usually they just rename one of the VMDKs. If I'm not mistaken there was a couple of posts here on the forums on this topic.

[joemagjr]

We recently started testing out the veeam product,
We are also experiencing the same error. What is the best method to rename the vmdk file? Do I perform that name change in the vm environment (by browsing the datastore, vsphere does not allow this renaming ) Do I have to rename the second vmdk file everytime I replicate the server? Or can I change this and be good to go?

Looking for the basic process on how to accomplish this so we can get the product to work for us. VCB is not an option for us at this time.

Your time is appreciated,

[YoMarK]

joemagjr: when using svmotion(storage vmotion) the disk will be renamed automatically(vmname_1.vmdk etc.), so you can do this without downtime.
However, in requires lots of free space(and the servers we're having problems with are large fileservers) so thats why it can be problematic.

The other option is to power down the VM(downtime), rename the vmdk(flat) files, edit the filename in the vmdk so that it points to the correct flat-vmdk file, and then edit the .vmx file so that is points to the correct vmdk files(or add the new disk in the vCenter console to the VM).

[wahome]

I have a similar issue but mine is about Storage vmotioning a VM with VMDK's spread over multiple LUN's. This VM is about 3TB across 2LUN's. How to i migrate the VM to a new datastore