Avamar: How to register and activate multiple clients with the same short name

Summary: This article discusses how to register and activate multiple clients with the same short name.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.

Instructions

An Avamar client fails to register because another client, which has the same hostname, is already registered with MCS. 

This is common where a service provider manages Avamar and cannot modify the hostname of an end user's Avamar client. 

This also occurs when a user wants to back up the same client as both a VM and an agent-based client.

avagent Error <7481>: Unable to register /domain/clientname with Administrator avamarserver.customer.com:28001'* 115 * nodename cannot be registered because it already exists in another domain' (115) avagent.d Info: Client activation error.


1) Use PuTTY to SSH to the Avamar server as the Linux operating system admin user

2) Make a backup copy of /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/mcserver.xml. 

cp -p /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/mcserver.xml /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/x-mcserver.xml.YYMMDD
3) Use VI to edit mcserver.xml and search for the line containing "allow_duplicate"


4) Change the value of the key from false to true.

<entry key="allow_duplicate_client_names" value="true" />
5) Save the changes and close the file
6) Restart MCS so the new parameters take effect  
dpnctl stop mcs
dpnctl start mcs,sched

Additional Information

 

Affected Products

Avamar

Products

Avamar
Article Properties
Article Number: 000026120
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 06 Feb 2025
Version:  4
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