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g33rbox
Contributor
Contributor

Recovering deleted VM's from SSD

Hey guys,

I believe I have learned a very valuable lesson today about triple checking before executing commands. I wanted to post this here, perhaps you have experience with this and can help.

I am a VMware beginner and have an ESXi host on a Dell r420 server which, over the last 4 months I have setup a windows deployment solution using Microsoft server 2k16 for MDT, WDS, DC and WSUS. The host is running a RAID1 2TB SAS SSD array. I just finished my fully automated windows build, capture and deploy TS's and was very happy.

I noticed in the vSphere web client that there was an invalid VM entry there from an old VM that I had. I tried to delete this entry and managed to delete all of my VMs from the datastore. Poof, gone.

I used rm -rf... I thought I had selected the directory that the stale VM was in but it was the directory that had all my VMs inside. Sweating heavily followed.... also severe cringing!! I removed 1 of the SSD drives as soon as I realised that the shit had hit the fan to avoid any more writes on that drive. I tried to run some recovery software on the running drive but with little success thus far.

I am fully aware that not having a proper backup solution is extremely retarded. This was a lab environment initially that grew into something I used in production to create and deploy images to our studio machines last week. I put about <200hrs into it.

My question is this. Do any of you know if it is possible to recover the VMware files needed to restore the VMs or is this impossible or basically going to cost an arm and a leg to get data recovery done? Am I screwed as its an SSD? I am assuming its cry in the shower time but hey, maybe one of you has some good news.

I would imagine this is beyond hilarious for some of you.. I understand why! Please have some mercy Smiley Wink

Thanks in advance for any input guys, it's really appreciated.

2 Replies
continuum
Immortal
Immortal

rm -rf is a quite reliable way to feel stupid a few seconds later.
But it is not necessary the end of the world.
VMDK-descriptorfiles typically exist in several copies.
And when deleting a flat.vmdk  the content of the actual file will not be overwritten.
Anyway - if you provide a VMFS-header dump I can tell you what can be recovered.
See Create a VMFS-Header-dump using an ESXi-Host in production | VM-Sickbay
I would suggest that you contact me via skype "sanbarrow"
Ulli


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

HawkieMan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

And thats why we have a great community here, People helping eachother. So dont be afraid to share Your misery, we all can show empathy as well as remember how it feels to screw up. Best of Luck, and I Guess a valuable lesson learned.

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