Corruupt USB boot drive, and repair steps

[allanl]

I came into work this moring and found that the VMWare ESXI 4.0 server which uses a USB thumb drive to boot had corrupted after a power outage, with a GRUB error 7. I happened to have built the 4.01 update CD to hand so I used it to overwrite the possibly corrupt files, and issued the repair command. Silly me. It completely overwrote the USB drive and blew away the partition tables. Don't ask me what "repair" is supposed to mean.

So I have three physical SATA drives with three good datastores containing multiple servers, but no way to get to them.

Are there any available utilities that will rebuild the missing tables from the visible datastores, or are there any methods to get them back into the VSphere client so they can be started and I'm back to Friday night's working system?

Finally, once bitten and twice shy, how do you backup the USB key (especially the tables) so I can quickly restore the USB key content no matter which version of ESXI is "updated" which blows away content?

In case anyone is interested, here is a listing of the drives...

Disk /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD5000AAJS2D00YFA0________________________WD2DWCAS80866984: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD5000AAJS2D00YFA0________________________WD2DWCAS80866984p1 128 976768064 488383968+ fb VMFS

Disk /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_______________________GEA530RE1KY1GA: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/t10.ATA_____Hitachi_HDP725050GLA360_______________________GEA530RE1KY1GAp1 128 976768064 488383968+ fb VMFS

Disk /dev/disks/t10.ATA_____Hitachi_HDT721010SLA360_______________________STF607MH31TERK: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/t10.ATA_____Hitachi_HDT721010SLA360_______________________STF607MH31TERKp1 128 1953520064 976759968+ fb VMFS

Disk /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0: 2008 MB, 2008547328 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 1915 cylinders, total 3922944 sectors

Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0p1 8192 1843199 917504 5 Extended

/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0p4 * 32 8191 4080 4 FAT16 <32M

/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0p5 8224 520191 255984 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0p6 520224 1032191 255984 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0p7 1032224 1257471 112624 fc VMKcore

/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0p8 1257504 1843199 292848 6 FAT16

Partition table entries are not in disk order

~ #

[DSTAVERT]

You can see the datastores? If you browse the datastores can you see the VM folders? If the VM folders are visible you can simply right click on the VM vmx file and "Add to Inventory". You will need to recreate the vSwitch settings IP etc.

You can download the vMA appliance or install the rcli tools. To backup the configuration from the command prompt

vicfg-cfgbackup --server servername --username root -s backup

You can restore with the same tool.

[allanl]

Thanks a lot for your help. Everything is back to normal! I clicked around before, but not on the .vmx item. I'm glad it was a simple procedure!

[AndreTheGiant]

The partition are still there (the fb partition are the VMFS volumes).

You can try to start with another ESXi and import the datastore.

To import an existing datastore, use Storage / add store but be sure to do not format the partition (in this case you loose all your data).

Andre

[allanl]

Thanks a lot for your help. Everything is back to normal! I clicked

around before, but not on the .vmx item. I'm glad it was a simple

procedure!

[DSTAVERT]

Glad it was simple.