If I have to rename some VMs that are vvol backed,

great info as always, thanks alex.carver

Rename where? On the array? Or in vSphere?

From the vSphere side of things you can just rename the VM as you normally would in vCenter.

The trick is that vSphere doesn't actually trigger a name update on the metadata tags, but they still will work and know the right volumes on the array to use. That just means that the volume group wont' get renamed on the array.

There was a powershell workflow that Cody wrote up a couple years ago that will automatically read through and see if the vm name doesn't match the volume group name and will rename the vgroup on the array for you. I think we built something in vRO for that too.

Otherwise, you can rename the volume group or vvols to whatever you want on the array, so long as it doesn't already exist.

This is a bit of an older post, but it shows you can rename on the array without any problems. https://carvertown.com/what-happens-when-i-rename-virtual-volume-on-the-flasharray/

jmccarty sorry, just saw your reply to this. In VMware we are upgrading all of our sql servers by deploying new VMs and migrating data. Once the replacements are considered stable, the old versions will be decommed and the new ones will be renamed. As I type this out, would it make more sense to rename the old VMs prior to deploying the replacements which would allow the replacements to have the correct name upon deployment?

the old VMs are not backed by vvol, the new ones are.