Use datastore resignaturing to retain the data stored on the VMFS datastore copy. When resignaturing a VMFS copy, ESX/ESXi assigns a new UUID and a new label to the copy, and mounts the copy as a datastore distinct from the original.
The default format of the new label assigned to the datastore is snap-snapID-oldLabel, where snapID is an integer and oldLabel is the label of the original datastore.
When you perform datastore resignaturing, consider the following points:
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Datastore resignaturing is irreversible.
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The LUN copy that contains the VMFS datastore that you resignature is no longer treated as a LUN copy.
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A spanned datastore can be resignatured only if all its extents are online.
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The resignaturing process is crash and fault tolerant. If the process is interrupted, you can resume it later.
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You can mount the new VMFS datastore without a risk of its UUID colliding with UUIDs of any other datastore, such as an ancestor or child in a hierarchy of LUN snapshots.
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