Restored VM (overwrite) with independent-persistent disk deleted

[5mall5nail5]

Hey all - restored a VM this evening that has a disk marked independent-persistent. Upon restore, Veeam prompted that the VM would be "overwritten" - yep, fine we wanted an in-place restore. However, once completed, the independent-persistent VMDK files are deleted all together. I had documented that path to each VMDK anticipating re-attaching to the VM, but the paths no longer contain a VM folder for the VM. SSH'd to the host and searched VMFS for $vmname* to look for all VMDKs anywhere on the datastore cluster and ONLY the disks that are dependent are available.

This is misleading and confusing at best - the backup jobs are configured to include only SCSI 0:0 and 0:1 and ignore anything thereafter. We create 0:2+ as independent-persistent. I get that those disks are not backed up both because they're excluded from the job as well as being an independent-persistent disk... but when Veeam says a VM will be overwritten that sounds fine - if you copy a folder containing files and say yes overwrite, it doesn't delete the folder contents and then copy - it's additive. Likewise if I restored a folder of files to a folder I would not expect it to "delete all the files and then only restore the ones I selected". I think this needs to be changed or re-worded unless I am missing something.

A restore of a VM with independent-persistent disks should not result in those disks being deleted (outside of the VMX location too, by the way, since we're using datastore clusters and SDRS). They should be abandoned from the VMX configuration but remain on disk. The job is configured to reconfigure the VM for disks that may not be available upon restore/etc. (the option in the exclusions).

Is this by design?

Thanks

[HannesK]

Hello,
I cannot confirm your issue. I just tested entire VM restore -> "restore to original location".

The wizard says "The following existing VMs will be deleted from the infrastructure".

It did not delete my independent disk.

My independent disk was also automatically connected to the VM. No issue at all.

Please open a case to verify your issue and post the case number here for reference

Best regards,
Hannes