Any issues to make a clone of a datastore in one vCenter, and then mount the clone and restore VM's from it in the other vCenter?

[vwmagic]

Technically, we have completed the procedure successfully, however, somebody said there would be some issues, and it is not recommended, but it was not clear to me on why.

I would like to ask Expert here. What issues could it cause, or may be potentially if any? Thanks!

[continuum]

You may need to resignature the datastore once it arrived in the new host.
Drawback of this procedure:
if you have any small corruptions in the source VMFS you will copy them along the way.
it is not very effective as you also need to copy the unused sections that can be filled with vmdk fragments of older and deleted vmdks.

[daphnissov]

It's just as continuum said, plus if you do this then those VMs at the other vCenter side will have the same MAC address and UUID. This will cause a problem if the source VMs are still online and available elsewhere. What you need to do is replicate those VMs using one of several different technologies available, which solves these problems.

[continuum]

So we should add the tip to unregister all VMs before creating the clone.

[vwmagic]

The described procedure is only for the purpose of restoring a VM. Once the clone is mounted in the other vCenter, we will vMotion it to a different datastore there, so, the VM will be residing on the datastore with a different UUID. At this point, the clone should be no longer needed. So, there would be no issue as you said. Correct?