Good morning,
I really need help with this (i'm risking my job :c)
After making a change on one of my virtual machines (resize the disk from 100GB to 200GB through Putty with commands), my virtual machine wont run, saying the parent disk and child disk capacities are different. But after making some research, i read about CID mismatch and i changed those with a text editor.
The virtual machine ran, but with a problem. It rolled back itself to the latest Snapshot stored, which was taken on May 2019, so, we have a lot of moths of works being lost in the process.
My question is, there is a way to recover the latest state of the machine before the roll back?
And the other question, just for info, why the virtual machine restored itself to the latest snapshot without being asked for it? I just changed the CID numbers to match it with the others .vmdk files (VM, VM000001 and VM000002).
Thanks.
Resizing a VM with snapshots will always cause severe issues (like yours), that's why the UI doesn't allow this.
Some questions to understand the current situation:
André
Hellp a.p., thanks for your reply.
To solve your questions:
- Yes, i shutdown the VM but after resize the disk partition within the guest OS, i don't notice any changes until it, because i went to my documents searching for a folder and not seeing it.
- I resized the partition within the guest OS, my bad.
- The last backup of the VM was on September i guest, so i dont know how it went too far, to May 2019.
I think this can happen if i change the CID of the virtual machines?
In the attachment, there are the configuration inside the .vmx file, i only changed the line scsi0:0.fileName = "PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-000002.vmdk" and the problem just appeared.
The point is that the snapshots work as a chain in VMware products. With pointing the virtual disk to .vmdk file other than the last one in the chain, you actually reverted its state. Anyway, theoretically it should be possible to restore the last backup to a new VM (don't overwrite the current files!!!), and then manually create a snapshot chain to the latest snapshot.
Which backup application do you use? Is it VM based, i.e. does it allow to either restore a single virtual disk, or the complete VM?
Can you please provide a complete list of files in the VM's folder? If yes, please connect to the host using e.g. putty, run ls -lisa from the command line in the VM's folder, and paste the command's text output (no screenshot please) in your next reply.
André
Hi, thanks for the reply.
I don't use any backup application, all changes are made internally on the vSphere client 5.5, how do i know if i can restore a single disk or a complete VM?
There is the output i get when using the ls -lisa code on the VM folder, is that okay? Or you need anything else?
total 183639744
130030852 64 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3640 Dec 15 02:35 .
4 1024 drwxr-xr-t 1 root root 1960 Dec 15 02:39 ..
503323908 78464000 -rw------- 1 root root 80346296320 May 31 2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-00000 1-delta.vmdk
507518212 0 -rw------- 1 root root 354 Apr 7 2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-000001.vm dk
197139716 34849792 -rw------- 1 root root 35685347328 Dec 14 20:01 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-00000 2-delta.vmdk
201334020 0 -rw------- 1 root root 361 Dec 14 19:52 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-000002.vm dk
499129604 64 -rw------- 1 root root 31764 Feb 20 2017 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-Snapshot1 .vmsn
192945412 16786432 -rw------- 1 root root 17189042238 May 31 2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-Snaps hot2.vmsn
146808068 53519360 -rw------- 1 root root 214748364800 Dec 15 02:35 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-flat .vmdk
176168196 64 -rw------- 1 root root 8684 Dec 15 02:35 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).nvram
511712516 0 -rw------- 1 root root 541 Dec 15 02:20 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmdk
142613764 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 833 Dec 14 20:13 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmsd
134225156 64 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3288 Dec 15 02:35 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmx
138419460 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3252 Apr 5 2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmxf
335551748 4096 -rw------- 1 root root 5447680 Nov 8 20:24 vmmcores-1.gz
360717572 2048 -rw------- 1 root root 3244032 Nov 12 12:14 vmmcores-2.gz
381689092 0 -rw------- 1 root root 475136 Nov 12 12:14 vmmcores-3.gz
402660612 0 -rw------- 1 root root 2588672 Nov 13 13:02 vmmcores-4.gz
423632132 11264 -rw------- 1 root root 10659688 Nov 13 13:25 vmmcores-5.gz
545266948 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 56152 Dec 14 21:50 vmware-46.log
591404292 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 55974 Dec 14 22:12 vmware-47.log
641735940 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 55973 Dec 14 22:28 vmware-48.log
767565060 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 55974 Dec 15 01:01 vmware-49.log
809508100 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 56065 Dec 15 01:46 vmware-50.log
830479620 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 56074 Dec 15 01:51 vmware-51.log
12590340 1024 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 251947 Dec 15 02:35 vmware.log
Thanks a lot for your help.
I don't use any backup application, ...
In your previous reply you mentioned that you backed up the VM in September? Please clarify.
André
Oh, i see. I really dont know if this count as a proper backup but the thing i did was downloaded the VM through DataStore Browser, downloading the files to a local folder.
That may help to recover the virtual disk.
Is the current downloaded flat.vmdk file's size ~100GB?
How much free disk sapce dou you have on the datastore?
André
The files on the backup folder are 175GB, but i only have 105GB free space on my datastore, i need to clean some files in order to upload the whole machine again in a new folder?
All that we need from the backup should be the flat.vmdk file. What is it's size? 100GB?
Do you have other VMs on that datastore, which could e.g. be temporarily powered off to free up disk some space, or do you have other VMs with snapshots that are not required anymore and can be deleted (from the Snapshot Manager)?
André
Sorry but there is a way to reduce the disk size to its original size? Because i have now the error saying that there is a parent disk with different size that child disk. How can i solve this?
Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Currently the snapshot files' metadata doesn't match the base file's size, and you've also modified the partition within the guest OS, which makes things difficult. We can try something. I'm not sure whether it will work, but it won't at least modify the existing files.
To do this I need the VM's .vmx file as well as the three .vmdk descriptor files (the small text files) that you may need to download via e.g. WinSCP.
Please compress/zip these 4 files, and attach the .zip archive to a reply post.
As a side note: If your backup doesn't contain the flat.vmdk file, then it's almost useless, because the snapshots require the base file.
André