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MrMauG
Contributor
Contributor

vSphere virtual machine accidentally restored to older snapshot

Good morning,

I really need help with this (i'm risking my job :c)

After making a change on one of my virtual machines (resize the disk from 100GB to 200GB through Putty with commands), my virtual machine wont run, saying the parent disk and child disk capacities are different. But after making some research, i read about CID mismatch and i changed those with a text editor.

The virtual machine ran, but with a problem. It rolled back itself to the latest Snapshot stored, which was taken on May 2019, so, we have a lot of moths of works being lost in the process.

My question is, there is a way to recover the latest state of the machine before the roll back?

And the other question, just for info, why the virtual machine restored itself to the latest snapshot without being asked for it? I just changed the CID numbers to match it with the others .vmdk files (VM, VM000001 and VM000002).

Thanks.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Resizing a VM with snapshots will always cause severe issues (like yours), that's why the UI doesn't allow this.

Some questions to understand the current situation:

  • Did you shutdown the VM again immediately after discovering that it rolled back to May to avoid further changes?
  • Did you already rezize partitions from within the guest OS?
  • When did you last backup the VM, and does the backup application allow virtual disk restores?

André

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MrMauG
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Hellp a.p., thanks for your reply.

To solve your questions:

- Yes, i shutdown the VM but after resize the disk partition within the guest OS, i don't notice any changes until it, because i went to my documents searching for a folder and not seeing it.

- I resized the partition within the guest OS, my bad.

- The last backup of the VM was on September i guest, so i dont know how it went too far, to May 2019.

I think this can happen if i change the CID of the virtual machines?

In the attachment, there are the configuration inside the .vmx file, i only changed the line scsi0:0.fileName = "PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-000002.vmdk" ​and the problem just appeared.

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a_p_
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The point is that the snapshots work as a chain in VMware products. With pointing the virtual disk to .vmdk file other than the last one in the chain, you actually reverted its state. Anyway, theoretically it should be possible to restore the last backup to a new VM (don't overwrite the current files!!!), and then manually create a snapshot chain to the latest snapshot.

Which backup application do you use? Is it VM based, i.e. does it allow to either restore a single virtual disk, or the complete VM?

Can you please provide a complete list of files in the VM's folder? If yes, please connect to the host using e.g. putty, run ls -lisa from the command line in the VM's folder, and paste the command's text output (no screenshot please) in your next reply.

André

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MrMauG
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Hi, thanks for the reply.

I don't use any backup application, all changes are made internally on the vSphere client 5.5, how do i know if i can restore a single disk or a complete VM?

There is the output i get when using the ls -lisa code on the VM folder, is that okay? Or you need anything else?

total 183639744

130030852     64 drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          3640 Dec 15 02:35 .

      4   1024 drwxr-xr-t    1 root     root          1960 Dec 15 02:39 ..

503323908 78464000 -rw-------    1 root     root     80346296320 May 31  2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-00000                                             1-delta.vmdk

507518212      0 -rw-------    1 root     root           354 Apr  7  2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-000001.vm                                             dk

197139716 34849792 -rw-------    1 root     root     35685347328 Dec 14 20:01 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-00000                                             2-delta.vmdk

201334020      0 -rw-------    1 root     root           361 Dec 14 19:52 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-000002.vm                                             dk

499129604     64 -rw-------    1 root     root         31764 Feb 20  2017 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-Snapshot1                                             .vmsn

192945412 16786432 -rw-------    1 root     root     17189042238 May 31  2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-Snaps                                             hot2.vmsn

146808068 53519360 -rw-------    1 root     root     214748364800 Dec 15 02:35 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new)-flat                                             .vmdk

176168196     64 -rw-------    1 root     root          8684 Dec 15 02:35 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).nvram

511712516      0 -rw-------    1 root     root           541 Dec 15 02:20 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmdk

142613764      0 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root           833 Dec 14 20:13 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmsd

134225156     64 -rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          3288 Dec 15 02:35 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmx

138419460     64 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root          3252 Apr  5  2019 PROSVRSAP - Win2012 (new).vmxf

335551748   4096 -rw-------    1 root     root       5447680 Nov  8 20:24 vmmcores-1.gz

360717572   2048 -rw-------    1 root     root       3244032 Nov 12 12:14 vmmcores-2.gz

381689092      0 -rw-------    1 root     root        475136 Nov 12 12:14 vmmcores-3.gz

402660612      0 -rw-------    1 root     root       2588672 Nov 13 13:02 vmmcores-4.gz

423632132  11264 -rw-------    1 root     root      10659688 Nov 13 13:25 vmmcores-5.gz

545266948     64 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         56152 Dec 14 21:50 vmware-46.log

591404292     64 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         55974 Dec 14 22:12 vmware-47.log

641735940     64 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         55973 Dec 14 22:28 vmware-48.log

767565060     64 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         55974 Dec 15 01:01 vmware-49.log

809508100     64 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         56065 Dec 15 01:46 vmware-50.log

830479620     64 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         56074 Dec 15 01:51 vmware-51.log

12590340   1024 -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        251947 Dec 15 02:35 vmware.log

Thanks a lot for your help.

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a_p_
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I don't use any backup application, ...

In your previous reply you mentioned that you backed up the VM in September? Please clarify.


André

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MrMauG
Contributor
Contributor

Oh, i see. I really dont know if this count as a proper backup but the thing i did was downloaded the VM through DataStore Browser, downloading the files to a local folder.

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a_p_
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That may help to recover the virtual disk.

Is the current downloaded flat.vmdk file's size ~100GB?

How much free disk sapce dou you have on the datastore?

André

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MrMauG
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The files on the backup folder are 175GB, but i only have 105GB free space on my datastore, i need to clean some files in order to upload the whole machine again in a new folder?

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a_p_
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All that we need from the backup should be the flat.vmdk file. What is it's size? 100GB?

Do you have other VMs on that datastore, which could e.g. be temporarily powered off to free up disk some space, or do you have other VMs with snapshots that are not required anymore and can be deleted (from the Snapshot Manager)?

André

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MrMauG
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Sorry but i don't see any flat.vmdk file, i have these files showed on the attachment.

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MrMauG
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Sorry but there is a way to reduce the disk size to its original size? Because i have now the error saying that there is a parent disk with different size that child disk. How can i solve this?

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a_p_
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Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Currently the snapshot files' metadata doesn't match the base file's size, and you've also modified the partition within the guest OS, which makes things difficult. We can try something. I'm not sure whether it will work, but it won't at least modify the existing files.

To do this I need the VM's .vmx file as well as the three .vmdk descriptor files (the small text files) that you may need to download via e.g. WinSCP.

Please compress/zip these 4 files, and attach the .zip archive to a reply post.

As a side note: If your backup doesn't contain the flat.vmdk file, then it's almost useless, because the snapshots require the base file.


André

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