Restored VM creates second VM on replication destination

[FrancWest]

Hi,

we are selecting VMs for replication by folder in vSphere. This way we don't have to individually select VMs. However, this causes an issue with replication. After a VM has been fully restored from backup it get's a new RefID from vSphere. The subsequent replication job treats this VM as a new VM which causes a second VM with suffix (1) to be created on the replication destination. It would be nice if Veeam detects such a situation during replication (it notices that a VM with the same name already exists) and it maps an existing replica to this VM so that it doesn't have to do a full seed for this restored VM. It also prevents creating another instance of this VM on the destination. Since we don't have access to vSphere on the remote location I have to contact the administrator on the remote site every time to clean up vSphere by deleting the old VM.

Franc.

[foggy]

Hi Franc, Veeam B&R cannot be sure it is the same VM based just on its name, you can name any VM similarly. You can map replication job to existing replica VM after the original VM is restored, however, Veeam B&R will still need to calculate full digests for it to make sure replica has exactly the same state as the source VM.

[FrancWest]

Hi,

but can't there be some logic so that when restoring an entire VM Veeam checks if the VM to be deleted as part of the restore is also part of an existing replication job and act accordingly by automatically enable seeding for that VM?

[foggy]

This might be a good suggestion. This wouldn't prevent digests calculation though.

[FrancWest]

Yes, I know, but that's better than ending up with duplicate vms on the remote site.

[foggy]

Agree, now you need to map the job manually to prevent that.

[FrancWest]

Indeed, but you forget to do that, since you aren't being warned about that by Veeam or you even don't know you have to do this and you'll notice it only after duplicate vms were already created on the remote site (just like I did ). You can only see this when you browse the remote site on the inventory tab.

[foggy]

Yes, your point is valid, some sort of a hint would be useful in this case.