Backup / restore operation breaks MAC license binding on 3rd party product

[tpjctrl]

I realise it's probably not something people see very often, but perhaps someone has a suggestion.

I've got a Windows Server 2016 running as a VM on a bare metal ESXi 6.7, there's a 3rd party application running on the OS which is licensed via a software license that binds to the MAC address of the "machine" (VM in this case). I've recently done a backup of this VM and then restored it to test the whole process and after restoring realised that the binding to the MAC address is broken due to the MAC address being now different. Does anyone know if there's a way to somehow retain the MAC address on a backup / restore? I kind of assumed this would happen, but apparently it changes (or something else changes in the process).

Also, when a backup / restore is done using Veeam B&R ver 10, are VM snapshots used anywhere in the process? I'm asking as this 3rd party app manual says that restoring to snapshots definitely breaks the license binding, so I'm trying to understand whether Veeam makes use of snapshots when doing backups / restores.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Regards,
Tom

[Link State]

Hi
You need to set static mac address to your VM


vmware-vsphere-f24/vm-restore-generates ... 45649.html

[Andreas Neufert]

Our Backup and restore process and VMware ist just following the settings that you have set within the VMware configuration.
By default a "dynamic MAC" address is set and we just restore the VM with that setting. If you do an inplace restore of the VM, you will get same MAC address. If you restore to a new place, then you will get a new MAC address.

By changing the VM configuration to a static MAC address we will restore the VM always with this MAC address without VMware changing the MAC afterwards.
Important point is that you can only change to a static MAC by shutting down the VM. And you will get a new MAC address with the change. So you need to update your software that uses the MAC address.

[tpjctrl]

Thanks for the replies! I'll give static / manual MAC a go.

Cheers,
Tom