Recreating a missing virtual machine disk descriptor file of a replicated VM on the DR side
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Recreating a missing virtual machine disk descriptor file of a replicated VM on the DR side

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Article ID: 307594

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Updated On:

Products

VMware Live Recovery VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


After replicating a VM from Production site to DR site virtual machine disk descriptor is missing

Environment

VMware vSphere Replication 8.x
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 8.x

Resolution

Follow Recreating a missing VMware virtual machine disk descriptor file (.vmdk) to create a descriptor file at the DR site


When you get to step 8 to edit the descriptor file, you will also need to make the below additional changes (IN RED) so that it doesn't error out while failing back to the production site 
The text in red for the DR descriptor needs to match the Prod descriptor. If the UUIDs don't match on both replication will fail due to a UUID mismatch.
 
Prod descriptor DR descriptor
# Disk DescriptorFile
version=3
encoding="UTF-8"
CID=c19e89b9
parentCID=ffffffff
isNativeSnapshot="no"
createType="vmfs"

# Extent description
RW 62914560 VMFS "VM_name-flat.vmdk"

# Change Tracking File
changeTrackPath="VM_name-ctk.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.deletable = "true"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "0"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "0"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "0"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "3916"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.longContentID = "6926d44c0ed53242d55f5a8dc19e89b9"
ddb.toolsVersion = "9344"
ddb.uuid = "xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx-yy xx xx xx xx xx 9e 06"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "8"
# Disk DescriptorFile
version=3
encoding="UTF-8"
CID=92ca8696
parentCID=ffffffff
isNativeSnapshot="no"
createType="vmfs"

# Extent description
RW 62914560 VMFS "VM_name-flat.vmdk"

# Change Tracking File
changeTrackPath="VM_name-ctk.vmdk"

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "0"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "0"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "0"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "3916"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.longContentID = "31f3b5f2da42fcbf2144cd7892ca8696"
ddb.toolsVersion = "9344"
ddb.uuid = "xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx-yy xx xx xx xx xx 9e 06"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "10"


Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
VM won't power on after failover