VMware vSphere

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  • 1.  Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 01:35 PM

    ​Long story short, I deleted a VM in ESXi 6.5. I was being careless I know. I didn't have any backups or snapshots locally.(I know, I've learned my lesson) And I've somehow lost the cloud backup encryption key that I had.

    I need it back as there are personal files on there that are very important to recover. ​ ​The deleted VM was in a 2 disk raid 1 array with the HDs formatted to VMFS.

    If anyone could provide some help it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance



  • 2.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 01:48 PM

    But... did you delete the VM from disk, or from inventory?

    Thanks



  • 3.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 01:51 PM

    From the inventory.

    I‘m 99% sure it isn’t showing up in my datastore browser anymore. But I shut the whole server down with a quickness once I realized what i had done.



  • 4.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 02:47 PM

    Connect by SSH on server.

    Find the localization of vm paste.

    If the content of the VM, open console WEB and register the VM.

    But... did you delete the VM from disk,only backup. Sorry



  • 5.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 03:28 PM

    Can elaborate a little bit? I know how to ssh into the server but what steps do i Need to take aftet that?

    thanks



  • 6.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 05:39 PM

    Step to step:

    cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>

    ls -la

    Verify that the VM folder



  • 7.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 09:08 PM

    i appreciate you trying to help, but I’m still drawing a blank with what I’m supposed to do.



  • 8.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 10, 2018 09:17 PM

    Hi,

    Wait for continuum​ to help or contact him on skype (sanbarrow)

    If there's somebody roaming these forums who might be able to help you recover your VM it is Ulli.

    --

    Wil



  • 9.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 13, 2018 03:46 PM

    Your probably going to need to take the disks fully offline(so they don't get any data written to them), then mount RO under a Linux boot disk like UltimateBoot CD and use something like "photorec" to search the drives for the deleted files.

    Rob



  • 10.  RE: Recover a deleted VM

    Posted Jul 13, 2018 10:25 PM

    Photorec is a tool that can recover files based based on the signature of the filetype / extension.

    VMDKs liked used with ESXi do not have a unique signature so there is no straight forward way to recover them with photorec.

    Photorec can be useful to recover Workstation vmdks on a Windows- or Linux-host.