Restore data from Flat & Sesparse VMDK

[HailegebriealA]

I have VM with VMDK 146GB, the power is interrupted during the snapshot process and the ESXI host booted up after the power interruption and i can only see 3 VMDK :

• Xxx1_1-flat.vmdk (with size 146GB)
• Xxx1_1-000001-sesparse.vmdk (with size 55GB)
• Xxx1_1-000002-sesparse.vmdk (with size 27GB)

and i couldn't consolidate the above disks. Any suggestion?

[a_p_]

Are these the only file that you have?
Although it should be possible to find out how the snapshot chain might have looked like, it would be helpful to see the sequence of the .vmdk files (in the vmware*.log files), the snapshot description file (.vmsd), or at least the virtual disk's file name in the VM's configuration (.vmx) file. The virtual disk's adapter type/model (can be found in the .vmx file) will also help to recreate the missing descriptor files.

Please provide above mentioned information as well as a file listing. It's important to see the exact file sizes, so please run ls -lisa *.vmdk in the VM's folder and post the command's output.

André

[dnguyen822]

I am also running into an issue where I power up my VM and it error's with "The file specified is not a virtual disk. Failed to start the virtual machine. Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/60a8d2cb-584dc5e0-67f5-bc97e146e8c6/{VM Folder/VM-NAME.vmdk} Module Disk power on failed or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Here are the VM files attached to the associated VM in question. Do I need to recreate descriptor files for all the sesparse.vmdk's?

VM-NAME-000001-sesparse.vmdk
VM-NAME-000001.vmdk
VM-NAME-000002-sesparse.vmdk
VM-NAME-000003-sesparse.vmdk
VM-NAME-000004-sesparse.vmdk
VM-NAME-000004.vmdk
VM-NAME-000005-sesparse.vmdk
VM-NAME-000005.vmdk
VM-NAME-000006-sesparse.vmdk
VM-NAME-000007-sesparse.vmdk
VM-NAME.vmsd
VM-NAME.vmx

Would appreciate any assistance!

[a_p_]

That doesn't look promising.

Not only that some descriptor files are missing, but also the main data (-flat.vmdk) file, which most likely contains the majority of the VMs data.

Did something happen which may have lead to this situation, like a power outage, running out of disk space, etc.?

André

[dnguyen822]

Unfortunately we did have a power outage that did effect the office but, literally yesterday, the flat-vmdk was just there. Because I initially recreated the temp-flat.vmdk file via vfstools and recreated the descriptor vmdk file for the VM and it was there. Nice now I have to find that file. SMH...