A VM registered on a clone/snapshot LUN, fails to access all of its vmdk disks
Article ID: 377257
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
LUNs with a vmfs volumes are cloned/replicated as part of a DR activity, or snapshots of LUNS are mounted to ESXi (e.g. as part of a VM recovery process).
When a VM on the vmfs on the cloned/snapshot volume is registered, it does not locate all of its disks.
Environment
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x
Cause
VM disks which are located within the VM folder with the .vmx file, are referenced in the VM .vmx configuration by disk name only with no pathing information, e.g.
scsi0:0.fileName = "<VM1>.vmdk".
Such a disk will be locatable on the cloned LUN when mounted.
However, disks which are on different datastores are referenced in the .vmx file by a path, in which the datastore is identified by UUID, e.g.
scsi0:1.fileName = "/vmfs/volumes/<datastore_UUID1>/<VM1>/<VM1>_1.vmdk
If a the cloned/snapshot LUNs are resignatured to mount it to ESXi, the datastores will each receive a new UUID. As a result, the path to such a disk in the .vmx file will not match the path to the recovered disk on the cloned resignatured LUN and these disks will not be locatable from the .vmx file.
Resolution
For vmdks which are referenced by a full path, update the paths with the UUIDs of the cloned/replicated resignatured LUNs.
For example, one way to achieve this is:
Via an SSH session to an ESXi host, navigate to the VM folder:
cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore_UUID>/<VM1>/
Take a back up of the .vmx file.
Edit the .vmx file, updating the UUIDs for any vmdks referenced with full path. Replace the UUID with the new UUID of the cloned/replicated resignatured LUNs.
Additional Information
For LUN resignature, see Troubleshooting LUNs detected as snapshot LUNs in vSphere.
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