Cannot transfer most VM files across NAS servers? (user permissions)

[MadManMike]

Hello,

I have setup an NAS server that all my vm's are stored on (using NFS file transfer), by mounting the NAS drive in Vsphere. I have now setup a second NAS server (both are running FreeNAS), the second server is primarily for backing up the primary server. It is setup using Rsync to copy all the files from the primary NAS.

However, I noticed that it is not transfering all the files, only the .VMX files. It will not trasfer the.vmdk files etc..

The same thing happeneds when I try to access the files through my NAS using SMB protical on a widnows machine. When I try to copy the files it says that I do not have permission to access them. (except for the .vms)

Why is this? how can I change it so that my 2nd NAS server can have access to those files?

Thank you for your responses!

-Mike

[wila]

Hi,

Your problem is probably two fold.

Your VMDK files might be only readable for root?

Next if you are trying to copy running virtual machines then it is pretty logical you can't copy open files as they are big and trying to copy a huge file that is being written to while copying is certainly going to be corrupted. Most likely even beyond repair.

What you can do for trying to clone running VM's, is to open a snapshot on these VMs as you can then copy the snapshotted disks without the delta-part as they are then only opened as read-only by your virtual machine.

Hope this helps,

--
Wil
_____________________________________________________
VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

Contributing author at blog www.planetvm.net

Twitter: @wilva

[MadManMike]

So it looks like cloning my VM's is going to be considerably harder than I thought. I guess I will have to do some more research

-Mike

[MadManMike]

I guess what I really am trying to do is create a NAS failover (or switchover). So that when my NAS (which is deticated to VM's) fails I can just switch the VMware server over to the other NAS. But now with the VM's being open, and snapshots etc... it seems as if this becomes much more complicated.

-Mike