Repairing a Corrupted VMware Server

[faster4233]

Hi,

Im running ESXi 4.0 with vCenter Server. The otherday we had an issue with one of our hosts crashing, after hours of investigation it seems that one of the Guests was to blame.

Everytime i try to add the Server to the inventory the vCenter Server Service crashes out disconnecting the console and not completing. It i try to reconvert the vmx i get a IO error when it tries to read the source, and i cant start it on ESXi because it wont inventory.

Is there anything i can do to repair it? My guess is the disks are corrupted and its ended up half way between a snapshot.

Any help is much appriciated

thanks

David

[Dave_Mishchenko]

A couple questions

- what sort of hardware are you dealing with?

- is it local or san storage

- so you've tried to connect directly with the VI client and start the VM and that gives an error?

You could reset the config of the ESXi host (in the DCUI), but do you first need to recover the VM (i.e. no backups)?

Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.

[faster4233]

Hi,

We are running 3 HP Proliant servers with the storage on Fibre SANS.

The issue is actually with a Virtual Guest Server. I have extracted a backup from our tapes but i cant get that to start either, It just tells me an unknow file is missing.

The backup contained only the following files:

Server-000001.vmdk

server.vmx

server.vmxf

servre_1-000001.vmdk

vmconfig.dat

Any ideas on how i can turn this into a valid VMware guest again? I think its missing the vmware hardware, can i just copy those from the old VM or will i need to create a new guest and attach the drives?

Thanks for the help

[faster4233]

It was a corrupted VMDK in the end, so i had to restore from backup.

Thanks for the help