Renamed Virtual Machine

[pearlyshells]

We created a few VMs under Test Conditions and later placed them into production. As they were placed into production, the VM names were changed to conform to standard Production Naming Conventions of our company. However, since purchasing vRanger and performing Virtual Backups, we noticed that vRanger still uses the old VM name. Can we rename the vmx and vmdk files for the "renamed" VMs without causing any problems for the VM? I'm guessing that we should be able to to using the Linux Move Command, correct?

[Rockapot]

Yes you can.

1.> Power down the virtual server in question, remove it from the inventory by using the VI client, now browse to the datastore where the flat files of the virtual server are kept (/vmfs/volumes ...etc..) and browse the server folder in question.

2.> Now rename the files with the incorrect names and set the names as the correct values.

3.> Edit the .vmx file with nano or vi and change the incorrect name values to the one's you renamed the actual flat files to.

4.> Now use the VI client to browse the datastore and add the server back in to the inventory and power on the server.

All done, hope this helps.

NB: Always take a backup of the original .vmx file, and keep note of the original names of the flat files incase you wish to roll back to the original config.

Carl

[pearlyshells]

many thanks. much appreciated.

[adolopo]

Or, you can use "vmkfstools -E"

[williamarrata]

What I've done in the past is, I do a cold migration from one LUN to another and that also works.

Hope that helped.

[pearlyshells]

many thanks. I'm getting a lot of good advice

[pearlyshells]

thanks very much. appreciate the good advice from everyone