I am wondering if anyone else has noticed problems when attempting to restore a 2008 R2 VM that was created from a hot-clone. In 5.5 it appears that hot-cloning 2008 R2 results in the cloned VM having VMDKs with names that look like snapshots (test-000002.vmdk, instead of test.vmdk) . This does not appear to be an issue until you attempt to restore. I only noticed this because I am testing a couple backup products and some of my VMs failed to restore. It turns out that those VMs are clones (not typically how we do things but they have a valid use case). They back up just fine and I would never have known there was a problem if I had not been testing. It only appears to be an issue with VSS (quiesced) backups, and I am only seeing it with 2008 R2 VMs that have the VMware Tools VSS provider installed. A specific example that I can replicate all day in vRanger and EMC Networker is: 1. Hot-clone a 2008 R2 VM. 2. Verify that it has the strange naming convention. 3. Perform a VSS (quiesced) backup. 4. Restore that backup and attempt to power on.
I started another discussion earlier because I thought the VMDK naming during a clone was not normal. Apparently it is expected in 5.5 (KB 2059505) but I don't think the restore issue is expected... I can confirm I did not have this issue before 5.5.
My other discussion provides more details https://communities.vmware.com/message/2509078#2509078
