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kopper27
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Mount a delta disk

hi guys

I 've had issues where I have to recreate the vmdk from a flat file and it works OK, just last week I did it but today I have a VM which does not have a flat files I mean the second VMDK which is the one I am having problems with

I only see this for this second VMDK

-rw-------    1 root     root        7.8M Feb  3 05:54 SapProd_1-000001-ctk.vmdk

-rw-------    1 root     root      449.1G Feb  3 14:25 SapProd_1-000001-delta.vmdk

-rw-------    1 root     root         421 Feb  3 05:54 SapProd_1-000001.vmdk

first disk is 100GB and is OK but the second is 500 GB and is not letting me to power on the VM

I used the procedure to mount the disk treating this delta as flat and the VM powered on but the disk in windows is asking me to be initialized

I used this procedure the one I always

( VMware KB:    Recreating a missing virtual machine disk descriptor file‌ )

If select the delta disk as an existing vmdk the disk size is shown as 0 GB

how can I fix this? what should I do? recreate vmdk from delta?

thanks

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2 Replies
ThompsG
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi kopper27,

The delta disk will be relying on a base disk in order to be a complete picture. If you don't have the associated base file then blocks will be missing that the delta will be expecting. It's possible you could run a disk recovery utility within the guest OS and retrieve some files but really need the base to be sure.

Kind regards.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

A delta disk with a broken snapshot chain cannot be mounted. Anyway, since the delta file's size is close to the mentioned 500GB you may be able to create a new base disk, modify the required settings to fix the snapshot chain, and access at least some of the data.

Please attach the existing .vmdk descriptor file (SapProd_1-000001.vmdk) to a reply post. Also check whether there are still vmware*.log files in the VM's base folder which contain references to the missing flat file, and attach these .log files too.

If you want to repair this by yourself, the basic steps are:

  • create a new virtual disk with the exact same size and type as the missing disk (flat and delta need to have the same number of blocks - see .vmdk descriptor file)
  • format the new virtual disk using the same OS/settings as used for the original/missing disk
  • fix the snapshot chain by editing the existing snapshot's .vmdk descriptor file (parentFileNameHint = The base disk's .vmdk descriptor file name, and parentCID = the base disk's CID)
  • attach the snapshot disk (using the .vmdk descriptor file name) to a virtual machine (Note #1), and reload the VM configuration to make ESXi aware of the changes (see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1026043)
  • create a new snapshot to avoid changes to the current delta file!

This should allow to access the disk. However, due to the missing/recreated flat file, the virtual disk will most likely have a corrupted file system.

Note #1: You cannot use the GUI to attach a snapshot disk to a VM. So what you want to do is to modify/edit the .vmx file and edit the file name for the newly created virtual disk so that it points to the delta disk's descriptor .vmdk name.

André

PS: Before doing something, take a look at the existing descriptor .vmdk file to ensure that the parent/flat file doesn't exist in anoter folder, i.e. actually still exists.

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