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VMW0087: BIOS UUIDs in vCloud Director are not unique when virtual machines are deployed from catalog templates (VMware)

Symptom

When using VMware vCloud Director, multiple virtual machines in vCenter Server have the same BIOS UUID.

This issue is seen when editing the .vmx file of a virtual machine. For example: 

uuid.bios = "42 16 33 b9 01 76 de 61-c2 03 aa 2d 73 64 2c e3"

Cause

By default, all instances and virtual machines that are deployed from a given catalog vApp or template in vCloud Director are assigned the same BIOD UUID, because the bios.uuid property is preserved.

Resolution

To work around the issue after the virtual machine is created:

In vCloud Director 1.0:

  1. Remove the uuid.bios entry from the .vmx files of the virtual machine deployed from the specific catalog.

  2. Power on the virtual machines in vCenter Server. When the virtual machines without a BIOS UUID are powered on, a new unique uuid.bios entry is created.

    Alternatively, the virtual machines can be uniquely identified by their vCenter Server UUID. For example: 

    vc.uuid = "50 16 fb 85 10 1a 96 f6-77 3a 0e 64 be 96 21 5b"

In vCloud Director 1.5 and vCloud Director 5.1:

You can now configure an option within the vCloud Database to correct this issue. The setting CloneBiosUuidOnVmCopy enables you to configure the following values:

  • 1 (true) - keep the existing BIOS UUID (default value).

  • 0 (false) - generate a new BIOS UUID.

To configure this option, the following SQL statement can be used to change the value:

update config set value = '0' where cat='vcloud' and name='backend.cloneBiosUuidOnVmCopy';

When the change has been configured, restart all cells in vCloud Director.

Additional Information

For more information, see the following articles:

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