Hello.
I have a vm that keeps failing to backup. checking the error received by the backup software "encountered more than one virtual machine disk with the same UUID".
I don't know much about the 'under the hood' of vmware, but by the name of it (UUID) I know it should be unique. however the vm itself is working with no problem at all.
Digging into this subject, I started checking out the UUID of all of our vmdk files (from all vm's). using powercli- I found that we have quite a few duplicate UUID between different machines (vmdk only, not vm). I also noticed that both of the vmdk disks used by my backup failing machine have no UUID.
I started searching Google and reading about the subject. I found that also the vm themselves have UUID that is used to generate the mac numbers and such, I found also about the option 'disk.EnableUUID' which I didn't understand what it does, but it is enabled on the vm that is failing to backup. (I didn't check other machines)
in short I am still very unclear about the subject. here are some questions I have to start with:
- how terrible is it having duplicate UUID? does the severity of duplicate UUID changes between vm UUID and vmdk UUID? if it is very terrible, why is the backup software the only thing that seems to care about this issue?
- what else (if there is any) has an UUID number?
- what can I do about duplicate UUID's? (how do I fix it?)
- what is the option 'disk.EnableUUID' used for?
- we disabled ssh on the esxi servers and manage everything through our windows based vcenter server with vsphere client and powercli. do I still need to use the vmkfstools to solve our issues, or that vsphere client and powercli are enough? can I use vmkfstools (if needed) from our vcenter server?
thanks in advance for the help
PS
sorry if I misplaced the discussion.. there are way too many topics, and the fact that almost everything sound like the same thing is just confusing.