Cloning a virtual machine with snapshots results in new virtual machine disks being named as snapshots 00000.-flat.vmdk

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Cloning a powered on Windows virtual machine that is running on snapshots in vSphere 5.5 results in the cloned virtual disks being renamed to match the name of the latest snapshot vmdk file.|

For example:

A virtual machine Test is running on snapshots, the base disk is Test-flat.vmdk and latest snapshot disk is Test-000008.vmdk. After cloning, the new virtual machine base disk created is named as Test-000008-flat.vmdk.

Note: This issue can occur even with running virtual machines (VMs) having no snapshots, as the first operation performed when cloning a disk on a running virtual machine is to take a snapshot of the disk.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

During a full virtual machine clone operation, the disk chains are consolidated, so there is only one output virtual disk and the snapshots are not cloned. The new virtual machine configuration file is populated with the name of the cloned virtual disk, so it is not necessary for the resulting base virtual disks (-flat.vmdk) to precisely match the name of any of the source disks.

Resolution

This a known issue affecting vSphere 5.5 and 6.0.

Currently, there is no resolution for ESX 5.5.

This issue is resolved in vCenter Server 6.0 Update 2, available at VMware Downloads.

To work around this issue, rename the disk. For more information, see Renaming a virtual machine and its files in VMware ESXi and ESX (1029513).

Additional Information

For more information about snapshots, see Understanding virtual machine snapshots in VMware ESXi and ESX (1015180).
Understanding VM snapshots in ESXi / ESX
Renaming a virtual machine and its files in VMware ESXi and ESX
スナップショットで仮想マシンのクローンを作成すると、00000.-flat.vmdk という名前のスナップショットとして新しい仮想マシン ディスクが作成される
如果对使用快照的虚拟机进行克隆，将导致新的虚拟机磁盘被命名为快照 00000.-flat.vmdk