Moving AppStacks to a different Manager

[szilagyic]

Hello:

We have two separate environments here, both with their own AppVol Managers.  We would like to copy our AppStacks from one to the other.  I know that AppVol Manager can import AppStacks so I have done a manual copy of the VMDKs over from one to the other and performed an Import and it brought it in.  The import works, and sees the VMDK and brings it in OK to the Manager.  However, it isn't seeing the applications within the AppStack and when I try to deploy it, the apps are not being deployed, even though I do see the VMDK being mounted in the VM.   I even assigned a drive letter to it and all of the file structure is there in the volume itself.

The one thing I did when I did the copy was to use the AppVol Backup utility (the VMware fling) to export that virtual appliance so that the VMDKs were their actual sizes and not inflated to the full 20 GB default size, since they are all thin provisioned on the datastore.  This was to save disk space; We do not want to use the entire 20 GB of SAN storage for each AppStack so this was the only way I could think of doing this.

If anybody has done this with success, please let me know if you have a better way or how you were able to get it working.  Thank you for your help!

[Ray_handels · Accepted solution]

We do this all the time but use the Vcenter datastore browser. I seems to do a copy of the full 20GB file looking at how long it takes but when the file is stored on the new datastore it is still thin provisioned.

Do keep in mind to copy the metadata file as well. When you look in the datastore browser every appstack has 2 files related to them. The actual VMDK flat file and the metadata file which is just a few kb in size.

When importing the only thing that is lost is the assignment. When we do this with writables it even import the status of the writable if it is enabled or disabled. Works like a charm..

[szilagyic]

Ray,

Thanks.  I did do it the way you do and sure enough worked great.  And yep, it thin provisions the disk when placing on the destination datastore.  Thanks for the reply and for your help!

Chris