HOW TO -Attach data disks from an existing VDP appliance to a new VDP appliance?

Problem

Worried about loss of backup disks due:

1-      Existing VDP appliance is corrupted / un-recoverable and unable to run

2-      Re-deployment of VDP appliance from scratch due to IP/DNS changes (Currently VDP is sensible to IP/DNS changes)

Solution

Solution to the above problem is to deploy a new VDP appliance and instead of creating a new storage, attach storage (data disks) from existing VDP appliance. VDP 5.5 introduces a functionality to attach storage from existing VDP appliance to a newly deployed appliance. This way, you never have to worry about backup loss in-case you en-counter with above mentioned problem.

How to? (Steps)

• Power-OFF the existing appliance and just remove the appliance from inventory (Do not delete)
• New VDP appliance should be deployed on a host that has access to the storage of existing VDP appliance. This allows the new VDP appliance to import/attach disks from existing VDP appliance. (It is not mandatory that, new VDP appliance should be deployed within the same vCenter as the existing VDP appliance. It can be a different vCenter if required.)
• Once the new VDP appliance is deployed successfully, open the VDP-Configure web page and configure the appliance as usual until you reach the Create Storage step
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• Select ‘Attach existing VDP storage’
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• Browse the data disks to attach from the existing VDP appliance
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• Select each data disk (.vmdk) to attach to the new VDP appliance. Multiple vmdks selection would have been nice here to complete the process in a single shot but unfortunately it is not allowed
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• Next couple of steps are self-explanatory
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• You will have to provide the root password of existing VDP appliance in the next step
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• You can see the data disks being imported/attached to the new VDP appliance
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• Related tasks below for reference
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• Once the new VDP appliance is 100% done with the configuration, connect to the appliance from web-client and you can notice the Restore tab containing the backup sets. (You may not find the backup jobs as they are stored on the base appliance disk which is clearly evident from the diagram mentioned in the solution section)
• Successfully restored the previously backed up VMs and continued protection of new VMs without any issues

Note – If you do not want the data disks to stay with the old appliance/storage any more, you can storage migrate the disks to the new VDP appliance storage at any point