Missing .vmdk after power failure?

[XDeus]

I couldn't restart a VM after a power failure and kept getting the vague message "file not found". After some time I discovered that the .vmdk file was missing, although the flat.vmdk file existed. I was able to track down instructions to enter the remote console via putty, copy an existing .vmdk file to the VM directory with the problem, edit the file and finally get it back up and running.

However, I'm more than a little concerned that this could occur with a simple power outage. Is there any way to backup these critical files? They are only a few kb, but VMWare reports them as many gigs in the datastore browser.

[wila]

Hi,

Welcome to the VMware forums!

A simple power outage should not have made any file missing. Does your RAID controller have a battery backed write cache?

Was your RAID in a consistent state after the outage or was it rebuilding?

As for the --

Wil

[XDeus]

Thanks for the reply, Wil

The RAID controller does have a battery backed cache, and it should have been in a consistent state. I'll have to check the logs, but I imagine if it was rebuilding during the outage then I would have had many more problems than just one missing text file.

It makes sense that it displays both files as one, but I was more concerned that this wasn't just a fluke and could be an ongoing issue. It seems like this same problem has happened to others because there are instructions out there on how to repair it. I was just hoping that there was a better way to restore these missing config files using a backup/restore method instead of worming my way through the console files.