Error Message: Item has already been added. Key in dictionary when performing a incremental backup (4032946)

Error Message: Item has already been added. Key in dictionary when performing a incremental backup

When you perform a incremental backup it fails with the following error.   Error Message: Item has already been added. Key in dictionary: '[datastorename] vmnamefolder/vmname.vmdk' Key being added: '[datastorename] vmnamefolder/vmname.vmdk'

This issue is spesific to vSphere 4.x.  When a VM has disks on different datastores vSphere 4.x names these disks the same and the problem arises when you have 3 or more disks that are named the same. With vSphere 4.x VMware stores the snapshot files in the on the datastore in the same directory as the VMs .vmx file and when vRanger attempts to read the snapshot info it is not able to find what it is looking for because the of the snapshot names.  This is only an issue for incremental backups and full backps of these machines do not have this problem. 

The problem has a couple of different solutions.

1.  Upgrade to vSphere 5.x (vSphere 5.x stores snapshots on the datastore that contains the disk rather then the datastore that contains the VMs .vmx file. With vSphere 5.x vRanger is able to find all the snapshots info it is looking for and the issue is not seen.)

2.  If you need to continue to use   vSphere 4.x you will need to place all or most of the disks on the same datastore to remove the 3 or more same named disks.  Once this is done this issue will go away. 

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