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NFS datastore remapped, VM re-imported - question on Veeam backup

  • 24 February 2022
  • 5 comments
  • 183 views

So I had fun the other night.  I had an older Synology NAS that was on NFS4.1 that i upgraded to the latest v7 OS.  However, 4.1 has been removed and reduced to 4.0 for that architecture (i’ve since seen you can bodge it in cmd line but not going there yet).

So I had to remove the NFS datastore from vcenter and remap with NFS3 and re-import the VM’s that were solely running on that storage.

So now Veeam see’s the VM’s as new ones but one is a large archive server.

 

Before I try to back that up, and find that it needs to backup the entire 20Tb offsite!! is there a way I can convince Veeam that this VM is the same as the one on it’s database.

Or do I not need to as it’s clever enough to realise?

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Best answer by regnor 24 February 2022, 11:47

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5 comments

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

With the removal and reimport of the VM, vCenter assigned a new MoRef ID to the VM. Veeam uses those IDs to match VMs to backupfiles and therefore it sees your server as a new VM and will start a new backup chain.

You can try to use the vCenter Migration Utility mentioned in the following KB article:KB2136: vCenter Migration Utility (veeam.com)

Just keep in mind that this tool and it’s actions aren’t supported by Veeam at all. So be careful of what you’re doing and take a configuration backup before. At worst, you’ll have to start a new active full backup. If you’re unsure, then I would suggest to contact Veeam support before doing anything.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Mhh, if the UUID of the VMs have been changed, then they are new VMs for Veeam. I am not sure if you can change the UUIDs.

Probably it could be a better solution to connect the NAS with iSCSI to the VMware cluster, becaus it is more stable. But I think then you have to restore your VMs to the new iSCSI datastore...

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

As @regnor has said, you can map these UUIDs, I’ve had best effort support from Veeam support before carrying out the mapping of old to new VM, provided you haven’t tried to back it up or alter the VM in any other ways that has been pretty stable.

 

I agree with @JMeixner that iSCSI is great because of this, but you would have to recreate the VM to achieve this…

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

With the removal and reimport of the VM, vCenter assigned a new MoRef ID to the VM. Veeam uses those IDs to match VMs to backupfiles and therefore it sees your server as a new VM and will start a new backup chain.

You can try to use the vCenter Migration Utility mentioned in the following KB article:KB2136: vCenter Migration Utility (veeam.com)

Just keep in mind that this tool and it’s actions aren’t supported by Veeam at all. So be careful of what you’re doing and take a configuration backup before. At worst, you’ll have to start a new active full backup. If you’re unsure, then I would suggest to contact Veeam support before doing anything.

This is probably the best advice for your issue and hopefully it works.

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

The vCenter migration tool is the way.  It works great though a bit clunky.  And again, unsupported.

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