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Storage vMotion does not rename files?

Duncan Epping · Jan 25, 2013 ·

A while back I posted that 5.0 U2 re-introduced the renaming behavior for VM file names. I was just informed by our excellent Support Team that unfortunately the release notes missed something crucial and Storage vMotion does not rename files by default. In order to get the renaming behavior you will have to set an advanced setting within vCenter.. This is how you do it:

  • Go to “Administration”
  • Click on “vCenter Server Settings”
  • Click “Advanced Settings”
  • Add the key “provisioning.relocate.enableRename” with value “true” and click “add”
  • Restart vCenter service or vCenter Server

Now the renaming of the files during the SvMotion process should work again!
All of you who need this functionality, please make sure to add this advanced setting.

storage vmotion does not rename files

Related

Storage, Various storage vmotion, SvMotion, vcenter

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rasmus Haslund says

    25 January, 2013 at 15:25

    Hi Duncan,

    Great post!
    Does this advanced option also work for ESXi 5.1?

    • Duncan Epping says

      25 January, 2013 at 15:37

      No, only fixed in U2. Will be added to a 5.1 update pack soon.

  2. Joyce says

    25 January, 2013 at 15:50

    Hi Duncan,
    Informative as usual.
    Had a really unusal Interview for a Job. I was asked if I follow any Virtualization Blogs I said Yes Yellow-Bricks. Next Question was ok “then what is the Latest topic he blogged about last night.
    I said apologies but I did not read the blog this morning. To which they said Do you actually follow the blog.”
    Then i was asked if i follow you on Twitter…. I do but – I didnt get the Job lol but I enjoyed it. 🙂

    • Andrew S says

      25 January, 2013 at 16:30

      How weird. You read the blog, but not frequently enough to get the job!?

      • Joyce says

        25 January, 2013 at 16:48

        Humm what can I say !! I am only human !!

    • Duncan Epping says

      25 January, 2013 at 16:44

      That is probably one of the strangest interviews I have heard about 🙂

      I hope you will have more luck next time.

      • Joyce says

        25 January, 2013 at 16:49

        Thank you Duncan.

  3. plopi says

    25 January, 2013 at 16:12

    So great, I was missing the feature !

    Thanks for the tip.

  4. Troy Clavell says

    25 January, 2013 at 16:33

    tested multiple times in the lab… fix works! Thank you sir!

  5. Fouad says

    25 January, 2013 at 20:06

    Hey,
    That fix was missing me. Somoene did it try on 5.0 U1 ?

  6. Arjan says

    25 January, 2013 at 20:36

    We talked about this today during a vSphere Design workshop training. I just told this feature was back in u2 and half an hour later you posted this…. Made me look bad 😉
    I shared the link to your site so they can take this action in account if needed. Thanks for the information

  7. Marco says

    26 January, 2013 at 00:56

    I was also beating my head against the wall because it did not work despite of U2…now it does. Many thanks 🙂

  8. udubplate says

    27 January, 2013 at 04:50

    It is extremely disappointing that this wasn’t returned to being enabled by default. There is really no logical reason someone wouldn’t want it to behave like that.

  9. karlochacon says

    27 January, 2013 at 06:46

    same thing it should be enable by default…

  10. Andi says

    28 January, 2013 at 15:56

    Hi,

    is this advanced settings supported? As it is not possible to delete the key from the advanced settings I am not sure if I want to use it in my production environment…

    Regards
    Andi

    • Duncan says

      29 January, 2013 at 08:52

      Yes it is officially supported.

  11. Rubeck says

    28 January, 2013 at 19:30

    Excellent question, Andi.. 😉

    /Rubeck

  12. thatITguy says

    29 January, 2013 at 00:42

    So when I add this value, it gets changed from “provisioning.relocate.enableRename” to “config.provisioning.relocate.enableRename”, is this the expected behaviour? When trying to script this with powershell it also fails unless I add the “config.” in front
    Example: get-advancedsetting -entity $defaultVIServer -name “provisioning.relocate.enableRename” | set-advancedsetting -value true -confirm:$false

    • Duncan says

      29 January, 2013 at 08:53

      Correct, expected behavior.

  13. Sri says

    30 January, 2013 at 05:43

    Does this Key “provisioning.relocate.enableRename” works for VMware VirtualCenter 5.0.0 build-455964 version ?

    • Duncan Epping says

      30 January, 2013 at 10:50

      5.0 U2 is the requirement as mentioned in the blog post.

  14. Daniel Baby says

    4 February, 2013 at 13:58

    Hi Duncan,
    thank you for this hint. But global question: Is it today (vSphere 5.1) not possible to edit Advanced Parameters within the WebClient? I get always a white caracters on white Screen ;-(

    • Duncan Epping says

      4 February, 2013 at 16:15

      it works fine here… weird

  15. Todd says

    5 February, 2013 at 17:42

    I am trying to figure out what is the importance of the renaming feature?
    I think I am missing something
    Please elaborate.

    Todd

    • Duncan Epping says

      5 February, 2013 at 19:02

      If you rename your VM in vCenter the filename on the VMFS doesn’t change. Just imagine something happens with your VM and you need to troubleshoot it on the command-line how do you know which one it is? So people use SvMotion to rename the virtual machine files by moving it to a different datastore.

      This functionality was removed, but now introduced again.

  16. Christian says

    7 February, 2013 at 17:58

    Can anyone come up with a good reason why it was removed in the first place?
    I’m thinking there must be a (good?) reason – and if there is, what are the drawbacks of re-enabling the feature?

  17. Dave says

    14 February, 2013 at 19:58

    Worked for all files except the .nvram file. Is that expected behavior?

  18. Sascha says

    19 February, 2013 at 11:26

    Hi,
    it’s not working with vCenter 5.1 (Build 947673). Doesn’t matter if the value is set or not. 🙁

    • Duncan Epping says

      19 February, 2013 at 11:52

      No it doesn’t indeed. Fix will make it in to an update as indicated in a comment above

      • Sascha says

        19 February, 2013 at 12:18

        Thank You for confirming.

  19. Chris Horn says

    27 April, 2013 at 07:31

    Hey Duncan – looks like this change made it in to ESXi 5.1 Update 1. Good stuff!

  20. Andy says

    30 April, 2013 at 21:18

    In the documentation it says that the original problem was due to a limitation in Storage DRS in vCenter 5.0 that needed the files and folders to remain the same on moves to keep track of servers SDRS stats. Somehow they figured out to use a UUID or other form of ID in the U2 release (no needed to track folder/file names). Then they used the same old code block for SDRS from 5.0 and broke it again in 5.1! LOL Obviously 5.1 U1 fixes it… again.

  21. A.B. says

    5 June, 2013 at 21:43

    I can confirm that this does NOT work on vCenter Server 5.1.0b aka 947673
    We will be upgrading our environment to 5.1 update 1.a and reposting.

    -A.B.
    New York, NY
    Greenwich, CT

  22. aleg says

    9 July, 2013 at 02:45

    Just tried this with vCenter Server 5.1.0 build 947673. Will not rename files, even with provisioning.relocate.enableRename = true.

    vCenter Server 5.1.0 build 1123961 is renaming files correctly. Last week, downloads from vmWare were ridiculously slow…less than 300Kbps. That was a no-go for a 3.4GB ISO.

    Today, we’re getting them at 16-17MB/sec. Took just a few minutes.

  23. Raj says

    31 October, 2013 at 19:29

    Thanks for all this information: does any one who has renamed Production and live VM ( win2k8R2) on esxi5.1.Please post step by steps. Thanks to all of you.

  24. Raj says

    31 October, 2013 at 19:32

    I have to perform this change in next Tuesday, does any one who has renamed Production and live VM ( win2k8R2) on esxi5.1.Please post it ( send it [email protected] )

  25. Jatin says

    27 November, 2013 at 00:02

    Is there a way to remove a key? while entering the key “provisioning.relocate.enableRename”, I had typo and mispressed enter twice, which let to adding the key. now there is a key that has no value assigned to it, but exists with other key, in the name “config.provisioning”.
    How lame, they should have even have one more tab to remove key!!!

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About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007), the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive", the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series, and the host of the "Unexplored Territory" podcast.

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