Can I Recover Deleted Tags?

[Jay3ird]

When deleting a tag, it disassociates the VMs or objects associated with it. If you were to recreate that same tag there will be no association. If someone mistakenly deleted a tag that was associated with hundreds of VMs, is there a way to get that tag and association back? I don't see a way to do so. The only way I see is to create a script, say in Powershell, to gather the tag info on an interval. Sort of a tag backup. Then another script to push those tags back out. Any ideas?

[jburen]

I think that information is stored in the database of vCenter... So maybe a restore of that database?

[Jay3ird]

That is what I was wondering as well. Are the tags stored in the VM datastore or a database on the vCenter? If stored in a database on the vCenter server, can I scrape that data off of it with a third party backup application?

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

The short answer is "no" because those tags aren't stored in the general vCenter database. When an object is removed from inventory that had tags associated, the tags are immediately dropped (based on last look). The only real way to recover lost tags is if you had an external mechanism to record them in some place (PowerCLI script writing to an output file, database, vRO automation, etc.).

[jburen]

Didn't know that... Another thing learned!