Accidentally deleted files from Vmware datastore

[Sirus2020]

I am facing a huge issue with my (3) vMware virtual machines, I accidentally deleted files from Vmware datastore , i was just deleting the unnecessary ISO files.

Requesting you kindly to help me to find a way to recover only one VM, the rest of Vms, i can rebuild another.

I am getting the following error:

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Module Disk power on failed.

Cannot open the disk ‘/vmfs/volumes/53dcf557-75fb2a56-2bcf-10604b9d8ba4/Server-4/Server-4.vmdk’ or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

The file specified is not a virtual disk

Thanks in advanced...

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

to find out what's possible, please connect to the ESXi host using e.g. putty, go the to VM's folder on the datatstore, run ls -lisa to list the existing files, and post the text output.

Please note, that in order to access the host via putty, you need to temporarily enable the SSH service on the ESXi host.

André

[scott28tt]

Moderator: Moved to ESXi

[userx87]

Hi I am linking to this answer of yours, I need to recover a virtual machine and I see this output in remote ssh.

Can I recover a folder deleted by mistake?

[ptarnawski]

Hey @userx87 ,

The answer to your question is:  depends...

1. What file it was, if it was a decryptor you can recreate it :

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1002511

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1026353

2. If it was a data file, then the only option is to restore it from backup

3. If you have no backup you can hire an external company to retrieve your deleted files.  (Costly and long process.... )