Volume IDs with NFS

[JasonBurrell]

I am going to be doing some manual copying of vmdk files from one ESX datacenter to another. When I look a machine with a snapshot it will have the following line:

parentFileNameHint="/vmfs/volumes/497a512c-19fe59a2-05fd-001f290a67f6/hqlab01/1063/001063-Windows.XP.SP3.x86-0-0.vmdk"

The new dataceter will be using NFS instead of FC. How can I create luns with the same ID "497a512c-19fe59a2-05fd-001f290a67f6" so I do not have to rename a bunch of files?

Also how does ESX know the ID and keep it the same on every host? Does it read it from a file on the lun? How would that work with NFS?

[Chamon]

How about using converter to move them. It should handle any renaming for you.

[JasonBurrell]

The sites are not connected. I have transfered the 1TB of files off to a external hard drive. Which will be pluged in at the new site.

[lamw]

It's probably best that you commit the snapshots prior to moving the VM, snapshots in general should not be kept for long period of duration. This will also help simply the move, but if you have to keep the snapshots once you copy the VM to your destination and re-registering the VM, the information should be automatically updated by the ESX host. If it does not for whatever reason, you can always get the datastore UUID by doing something like the following:

[root@himalaya root]# vdf -h -P
....
/vmfs/volumes/49c69ee4-9830be56-c69d-003048670886        29G  8.4G   21G  28% /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.SSDstorage
/vmfs/volumes/d32c5a97-e039bdbf       1.3T  531G  817G  39% /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups

You'll get the datastore UUID matched up with the datastore name

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William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

[depping]

there's no way you can create volumes with the same ID... it's a unique ID and there's a very good reason for that. The ID is hidden in the volume header / metadata of the volume.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[depping]

You could still use VMware Converter by the way! Just plugin the disk and point Converter to the VM. It will change all the paths automatically for you.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[JasonBurrell]

If it is in the metadata of the volume how does that work for NFS where it is not a vmfs file system?