VM has two vmdks with the same name on different datastores

[dewstain]

Hey everyone.  I have a conundrum.  A server I'm looking at has two VMDKs with the same name, spread across two datastores, i.e.

[datastore1] server.vmdk

[datastore2] server.vmdk

No _1.vmdk like you'd normally see.

This environment also has several small datastores allocated to just one server, etc.  I'm looking to consolidate it into a few larger datastores, so the idea is to storage vMotion this server.  But I don't know what will happen if I try to move this server to just one datastore.  Will it rename them?  Will it just get confused and consolidate them?

Another issue with this particular server is directly attached iSCSI storage.  Yes, this server has 5 vmdk drives as well as iSCSI drives.  And none of them are small.  The server overall is probably about 20 TB of storage; it's a large file server for a graphical arts type of office.  My overall plan is to convert the directly attached iSCSI volumes into VMDKs by mirroring them, and to move the server into one large datastore, but there's some context.  Want to make sure I've got this right before moving forward.

Worst case scenario is I P2V the whole thing into a new server, but that of course requires downtime.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

What you see is by design. The first virtual disk in a folder is named <vmname>.vmdk, the second one <vmname>_1.vmdk, and so on. Once a new virtual disk is created in another datatore/folder the name of the first disk will also be <vmname>.vmdk. Storage vMotion will rename the virtual disks if they are migrated to a common folder.

Even if the virtual disks had individual names like system.vmdk, data.vmdk, ... , Stroage vMotion would rename them.

André

[dewstain]

Awesome, thanks for the reply.  I've probably seen that before but never took notice.  This environment is precarious so I'm cautious of everything.