NEED HELP WITH VDMK RECOVERY

[Lukecs93]

so we have been having some issues with backups for a particular VM which a couple colleagues of mine have been looking into today. 

unable to power on the VM, a new VM was created with the disks attached and everything was working. 

The issue was instead of detaching these disks, the VM was deleted/destroyed and now the data has gone from the datastore (7+TB of data). 

SSH to the host and I can't see any flat files, any files to be honest for this disk. 

I can see multiple snapshot disks are present but the one I need is gone. 

Any help? 

[BivasM]

your situation needs to be clarified a bit.

let me see if I understand it correctly

there was a power problem with a vm (lets call it vm A)

you created a new vm (vm B) using the disks of vm A.

then vm A was deleted (was vm B running at that time? if running it should not let you delete disks)

after delete opration what is the status of vm B?

[Lukecs93]

Unfortunately it was vm b that was deleted. 

Now the disks appear to have gone and my datastore has alot of free space.

Was nearly full.

[Lukecs93]

Unfortunately it was vm b that was deleted. 

Now the disks appear to have gone and my datastore has alot of free space.

[BivasM]

that is unfortunate . if vm A folder is still there . download the .vmx file from it. you can confirm from there the name of snapshot disks.

(whether the snapshot disks you see belong to vm A)

but at this point i dont think there is anything you can do. snapshot disks without base disks are unusable as per knowledge.

you can engage vmware support or any forensic data recovery service to retrieve data from disk (but chances for that are very low).

wish you luck.

[Lukecs93]

I thought so, 

Do you have any recommendations of any data recovery forensics you have come across? 

[scott28tt]

Not sure if @continuum is still an active forum member, he might be able to offer guidance.

[BivasM]

not sure. this is why i said vmware support first. because the filesystem you will try to recover from is vmfs

[CallistoJag]

https://www.diskinternals.com/vmfs-recovery/