VMware Cloud Community
zenomorph
Contributor
Contributor

Duplicate ddb.uuid on VMDKs

We previously setup a default template which we use for deployment of our VMs and the last few days we've encountered an issue where we find that the vmdk file of various VMs are getting created with the same "ddb.uuid".

It only started happening the last few days when we tried to mount the VMDKs on other VMs we get an error. I've looked back at some VMs we created previously and found that the ddb.uuid were unique but the last 5-6 VMs we created all ended up having the same id.

All the MVs have the ddb.uuid value as "60 00 C2 99 75 99 15 2f-ee 55 00 a9 1a 79 8b 94"

  1. Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

CID=de0d8178

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="vmfs"

  1. Extent description

RW 10485760 VMFS "WindowsXX-flat.vmdk"

  1. The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.heads = "255"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "652"

ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 99 75 99 15 2f-ee 55 00 a9 1a 79 8b 94"

ddb.toolsVersion = "7299"

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"

and then when we try to mount the disks with other VMs its gives the error attached. Any reason on the cause.

Cheers.

Reply
0 Kudos
8 Replies
kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

Are you using multiple vc's? This is typically handled by the vc, and/or the ESX server, if vc is not avaialable. Are you cloning an existing pointing to an ESX host, as opposed to a vc? Again, typically, this will happen if you copy the files manually in order to create a clone.

What process are you following when deploying the vm's?

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
Reply
0 Kudos
zenomorph
Contributor
Contributor

KjB

We've only got one VC and what were using is a template we created earlier on. The issue seems to have only started happening this week. If we have 4 ESX Servers (no SAN local VMFS only) does it matter where the template is placed. At the moment we have the template on ESX-1 local storage and deploy the template to the other ESX Servers.

What we've found is that we're getting VMDK files with duplicate dd.uuid's error when we try to mount the VMDF's for extending on different VMs.

Reply
0 Kudos
kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

I don't understand the last part. You're attaching an existing vmdk to a different VM for extending? Extending what?

If you mount a windows vmdk to another host, this may cause the signature and/or the disk to be added and updated to associate to the new vm.

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
Reply
0 Kudos
zenomorph
Contributor
Contributor

What I meant with the extending part is we are extending the size of the Virtual Disk (vmdk eg. we have a default size 10GB and we extend it to 20GB use the suggested approach mentioned in the Community using diskpart and the extend command).

Back to the problem we did some more testing today and found as 4 have four ESX servers (ESX1,ESX2,ESX3,ESX4) and the template (default just c:\ only Win2k3) is sitting on the local storage of ESX1 if we generate 2 VMs using this template to each of ESX2, ESX3 and ESX4 we will get VMs with the same ddb.uuid.

But when we generate VMs to ESX1 (which is where the template is stored locally) the db.uuid's are fine each VMDF each VMs ddb.uuid is unique for each VM.

The we did another test was to copy the template to ESX4 and generated various VMs to ESX4 and found then the ddb.uuids on each VM were unique, is there an issue if we use a template stored locally on an ESX to other ESX servers? Can we manually change the ddb.uuid value?

Another thing we found today was that if we powered off those 4 VMs on ESX4 we found with duplicate dbb.uuid's we'd have difficulty booting the VM up again and the c:\ 's "vmname.vmdk" file would disappear and we'd have to create another vmdk file for the VMs.

Cheers................

Reply
0 Kudos
zenomorph
Contributor
Contributor

Hi there can anyone give me some pointers on this, its really causing us some issues.

Cheers many thanks

Reply
0 Kudos
Lee_Sun
Contributor
Contributor

Do you directly COPY template Converter to VM

Reply
0 Kudos
zenomorph
Contributor
Contributor

Lee,

Actually what I was had a VM them converted it to a template. Then later chose the template then "delpoy to Virtual machine".

Reply
0 Kudos
kchan1
Contributor
Contributor

You can regenerate new UUID to the vmdk by:

/usr/sbin/vmkfstools -J setuuid $path_to_vm/vmname.vmdk

Reply
0 Kudos