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vite1
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Raw Device Mapping from a VM to a HP EVA P6000 system was deleted

Someone recently deleted a Virtual Disk/LUN on our EVA HP system. I found a rdmp.vmdk file within the original VM's folder. Is there anything or anyway to mount this file and get data back? It was an SQL DB that was Raw Device Mapped. I saw some discussion groups where they said that even if you convert this into a regular .vmdk you will see nothing and that this file is just used for pointers. I was going to create a new Virtual Disk/LUN using all the leftover free space on the EVA and RDM it to a VM and scan it with data recover software within the VM and I was told by both a data recover company and HP that there isn't any way to retrieve that data. The only way would be to send it to a recover lab where they can work on it for weeks and recover data and try to put all of the files back etc., If anyone has had experience with getting data back from this type of setup please let me know. Thanks.

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a_p_
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I'm afraid you are out of luck. A physical RDM (...-rdmp.vmdk) is nothing more than a pointer to the original LUN on the storage system. If the LUN has been deleted the pointer is worthless. And with the EVA storage there may also not be a big chance to recover the data (even for a data recovery company) since the EVA usually runs a leveling after creating/deleting LUNs to distribute the existing data evenly on the disks, so at least some of the data may have been overwritten by now anyway.

Your best (only?) option - in my opinion - is to recover from the most recent backup.

André

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