Need help recovering 3 weeks of data!

[FernandoM1]

My understanding on VMware is very basic, so please bear with me.  For some reason I've yet to understand, our file server crashed, and after our IT guy brought it back up he said he wasn't able to get the current image to load so he used a 3 week old backup (the reason for why the backup is so old it's even more convoluted).   Then he left due to personal reasons for 1 or 2 week.  So now it's fallen to me to see if I can recover any of those files, and I'm out of ideas.  Any help will be really appreciated!

The server is running ESXi 2.12, I can access it thru the web interface, but I'm wary of touching it since people already started working off the old backup.  Instead I downloaded the files that wouldn't work for IT (see below), and I'm hoping that it'd be possible to open those files in VM Player and rescue as much as I can.

Thanks, 

- Fernando Márquez

[a_p_]

Which files are in the backup?
Can you please provide a complete file listing of these files?

André

[FernandoM1]

Hi Andre,

 I believe this is what you are asking for:

total 26115392
1348 128 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 73728 Aug 29 01:10 .
8390084 128 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 73728 Aug 29 00:44 ..
20974788 8388608 -rw------- 1 root root 8589934592 Aug 29 01:10 FS-Restored-6d541793.vswp
3268 64 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 10083 Aug 29 00:44 FS-Restored-Snapshot1.vmsn
4197572 3312640 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 4591902720 Aug 30 09:05 disk0-000001-sesparse.vmdk
8391876 0 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 388 Aug 29 01:10 disk0-000001.vmdk
12586180 14413824 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 23113760768 Aug 30 09:06 disk1-000001-sesparse.vmdk
16780484 0 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 389 Aug 29 01:10 disk1-000001.vmdk

[a_p_]

Not really, what I'm expecting are the .vmdk base disks, which are likely named disk0-flat.vmdk, and disk1-flat.vmdk.

What's also a bit confusing, is that the snapshot files in your original post were named "...delta...", wheras you now present "...sesparse..." files, which have a different file structure. Please explain.

It may also help to see a complete file listing of the VM's current production folder/files. On ESXi run ls -lisa > filelist.txt in the VM's folder, and attach the filelist.txt to your next reply.

As a side note: You mentioned "The server is running ESXi 2.12", however, this version never existed for ESXi. In case it's ESXi please provide the version/build. In case it's another product, please specify which one.

André

[FernandoM1]

I'll try to explain as best as I can, apologies if it makes no sense.

We had 4 different Hyper-V images running and getting backed-up to a NAS using Veeam before we had a power shortage 3 weeks ago.  That's when IT decided to switch to VMware.  He successfully migrated the 3 smaller images, but the big file server was too big to do a full migration in such short window, so he decided to wait until the labor day weekend to complete it.  Instead (and this is were I'm completely lost) thru some dark magic he mapped the NAS backup, which still has the .vhdx files,  to VMware and everything new written was getting saved to that -delta.vmdk I first listed, and called it FS.  None was the wiser until 2 days ago, something happened that broke the file server image and he wasn't able to restart it.  So what he did was rename FS to FS-OLD and created FS-Restored using the 3 week backup which is what we are currently using .

So to your questions:
- I've been trying to look for those -flat files to no avail.

- The -delta files are from FS-OLD, the one that I'm trying to restore, the sesparse files are from FS-Restored which is the 3 week old copy we are currently using.

- I'm not sure which folder you are looking for, could you please specify? I've attached the list for /vmfs/volumes

- Here's the full version info
Client version:2.12.0
Client build number:21482143
ESXi version:8.0.1
ESXi build number:21813344

[a_p_]

Best bet would likely be if you create 2 file listings, one for /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/FS-OLD, and one for /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/FS-Restored. Please name the output files accordingly, e.g. filelist-OLD.txt, and fielelist-Restored.txt. Make sure that you use the ls -lisa command as  mentioned before, because this will show additional columns which may be useful.

If both folders do not contain find any flat.vmdk files, provide the contents of the small disk0.vmdk, and disk1.vmdk. Both of them should be small text files with only a few hundred bytes in size.

André

[FernandoM1]

Here you go, the filelist for both old and restored images, and disk0 for both old and restored as well.

[FernandoM1]

Quick update, I was able to locate the -flat files, I'm attaching the filelist, disk0.vmdk, and disk1.vmdk.  A small light of hope!

[BarryGrowler]

Install VMware Workstation Player on a separate machine. Create a new VM in it but use the downloaded VMDK files as the VM's disk. Try booting this VM. If it works, you can access and transfer the files you need to recover. If the VM doesn't boot directly, consider using a live CD or recovery tool within the VM environment to access the file system and retrieve your data.