Good Morning Everyone! I have a bit of a problem that I’m recovering from and I’d like to see what everyone thinks. I went into my VM and deleted all snapshots one of which included a “consolidated helper” snapshot. I came in the next day to find that my VM had powered itself off and was not start able with an error “The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created". I contacted VMware and they stated after a long hour of investigation that I was screwed and that I could remove and read the disks and it would take me back to the original state of one of my snapshots (from Nov 2007). So I did this because I was told that there is a small chance that there may be some data recovered closer to the current date. This morning I came in and I looked at the files again and thought I noticed another file that was not there yesterday (may be imagining things but I’m hopeful). Please look at the list of files below with the CAT’s of the vmdk’s and let me know what you think. I’m dying here because this was an exchange server with about 100 mailboxes on it along with our public folders. Before you ask, my backups were failing and I wasn’t aware of it. Thanks in advance for anything you can help out with!! If anyone wants to do a live meeting session I’d be glad to set it up.
The file that I’m specifically looking at is the us-hou-ex01_1-000008-delta.vmdk. I’m assuming that has the data that I’m missing. VM Current state is powered off but from the work done per VMware yesterday, the VM has been reverted to its Nov 2007 State.
-rw------- 1 root root 234913792 Feb 16 17:16 us-hou-ex01-000002-delta.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 231 Feb 16 10:34 us-hou-ex01-000002.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 1241823232 Feb 16 17:16 us-hou-ex01_1-000008-delta.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 236 Feb 16 17:16 us-hou-ex01_1-000008.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 161061273600 Feb 17 06:46 us-hou-ex01_1-flat.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 347 Feb 17 06:37 us-hou-ex01_1.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 16861184 Feb 16 09:54 us-hou-ex01_2-000001-delta.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 261 Feb 10 19:34 us-hou-ex01_2-000001.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 83968 Feb 16 09:54 us-hou-ex01_2-000002-delta.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 242 Feb 16 09:54 us-hou-ex01_2-000002.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 42949672960 Feb 17 06:39 us-hou-ex01_2-flat.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 406 Feb 17 06:37 us-hou-ex01_2.vmdk
-rw-rr 1 root root 48 Feb 9 18:26 us-hou-ex01-5c062b63.hlog
-rw------- 1 root root 16106127360 Feb 17 06:57 us-hou-ex01-flat.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 8684 Feb 17 06:57 us-hou-ex01.nvram
-rw------- 1 root root 20229 Feb 16 09:54 us-hou-ex01-Snapshot9.vmsn
-rw------- 1 root root 343 Feb 17 06:57 us-hou-ex01.vmdk
-rw------- 1 root root 2576 Feb 16 17:16 us-hou-ex01.vmsd
-rw------- 1 root root 3247 Feb 17 06:58 us-hou-ex01.vmx
-rw------- 1 root root 278 Feb 17 06:58 us-hou-ex01.vmxf
-rw-rr 1 root root 27091 Feb 17 05:14 vmware-100.log
-rw-rr 1 root root 27091 Feb 17 05:14 vmware-101.log
-rw-rr 1 root root 27091 Feb 17 05:15 vmware-102.log
-rw-rr 1 root root 27092 Feb 17 05:33 vmware-103.log
-rw-rr 1 root root 40746 Feb 17 06:57 vmware-104.log
-rw-rr 1 root root 157898 Feb 16 17:16 vmware-99.log
-rw-rr 1 root root 35630 Feb 17 06:58 vmware.log
-r----
1 root root 3149824 Jan 8 2008 vmware-vmx-zdump.0
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01# cat us-hou-ex01-000002.vmdk
Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=1a863cda
parentCID=b977e8db
createType="vmfsSparse"
parentFileNameHint="us-hou-ex01.vmdk"
Extent description
RW 31457280 VMFSSPARSE "us-hou-ex01-000002-delta.vmdk"
The Disk Data Base
#DDB
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01# cat us-hou-ex01_1-000008.vmdk
Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=1f5aef02
parentCID=716c676d
createType="vmfsSparse"
parentFileNameHint="us-hou-ex01_1.vmdk"
Extent description
RW 314572800 VMFSSPARSE "us-hou-ex01_1-000008-delta.vmdk"
The Disk Data Base
#DDB
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01# cat us-hou-ex01_1.vmdk
Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=1101d8a3
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="vmfs"
Extent description
RW 314572800 VMFS "us-hou-ex01_1-flat.vmdk"
The Disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "19581"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.toolsVersion = "7302"
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01# cat us-hou-ex01_2-000001.vmdk
Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=9023a4f0
parentCID=2dea0da1
createType="vmfsSparse"
parentFileNameHint="us-hou-ex01_2.vmdk"
Extent description
RW 83886080 VMFSSPARSE "us-hou-ex01_2-000001-delta.vmdk"
The Disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.toolsVersion = "7302"
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01# cat us-hou-ex01_2-000002.vmdk
Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=9023a4f0
parentCID=9023a4f0
createType="vmfsSparse"
parentFileNameHint="us-hou-ex01_2-000001.vmdk"
Extent description
RW 83886080 VMFSSPARSE "us-hou-ex01_2-000002-delta.vmdk"
The Disk Data Base
#DDB
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01# cat us-hou-ex01_2.vmdk
Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=a92a7a4d
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="vmfs"
Extent description
RW 83886080 VMFS "us-hou-ex01_2-flat.vmdk"
The Disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.toolsVersion = "7302"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "5221"
ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 96 ea d1 2a c3-af 42 f8 7d ee 6d d6 fa"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01# cat us-hou-ex01.vmdk
Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=b4546a17
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="vmfs"
Extent description
RW 31457280 VMFS "us-hou-ex01-flat.vmdk"
The Disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.toolsVersion = "7302"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "1958"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"
root@us-hou-vmhst01 us-hou-ex01#
