Independent disks of other disks. Safe removal?

[PeterLind]

We're using EMC Avamar as backup of VM's.

The VM avamar server add's the disks of the VM's it taking backup off, as Independent and nonpersistent disks.

Avamar failed the backup job and the server still has the disks mounted. We've shut it down.

We're afraid to remove the disks from the avamar server, we're not sure if that will remove the disk completely from the server that has the real disks mounted?

Does anyone know if it's safe to remove them? We can't startup the avamar server, because the disks it has mounted are in use.

This is how it looks on the Avamar server, it has the disks of the backed up server mounted:

This is how it looks on the backed up server, you can see it's the same disk (DNFILXX_3.vmdk):

Can we safely remove the disks from the Avamar server, without them being deleted from the backed up server also?

Thank you in advance.

Regards
Pete

Message was edited by: PeterLind

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

I'm not 100% sure (but almost) that you can safely remove the virtual disks from the appliance. When you do this, make sure you select the "Remove from virtual machine" option (do NOT select the option to delete the files from disk)!

The virtual disks are mounted as "independent-nonpersistent", which - once the appliance is powered on - automatically creates a redo-disk (snapshot), and since the appliance is currently powered off, the real virtual disks show up.

I saw the same issue with an Acronis vmProtect appliance - which seems to work similar - a few weeks ago.

André

[PeterLind]

Hi a.p.

You were right. We contacted vmware support, they assured us it wasn't a problem to remove the disks.

Thanks for the help!