Troubleshooting › Backup and Recovery Operations › The Agent Does Not Delete Existing VMs after a Recover VM Job Completes

The Agent Does Not Delete Existing VMs after a Recover VM Job Completes

Valid on all supported Windows operating systems.

Symptom

Arcserve Backup may not delete the existing VM on the target ESX Server system in the following scenario:

• You submit a Recover VM job.
• You specified the Overwrite VM global restore option.
• Arcserve Backup successfully recovers the VM to the backup proxy system (ESX Server system).

Solution

This is expected behavior.

The agent combines the UUID and host name of a VM to create a unique identifier for the VM. Arcserve Backup uses the identifier to distinguish backup and restore operations for the particular VM. However, VMware vSphere no longer uses the UUID as a mechanism to identify VMs. When you submit a job to recover the VM and specify the Overwrite VM option, Arcserve Backup does not delete the original VM if it cannot detect a VM with the same UUID and host name as that of the original VM. As a result, Arcserve Backup creates a new VM rather than overwrite the existing VM. The approach helps ensure that Arcserve Backup does not delete VM in error. Arcserve Backup also behaves in this manner in the following scenarios:

• The UUID or host name of the VM was changed.
• The VM was powered off or down (the agent cannot retrieve the host name of the VM).