Undelete deleted VM with vSphere Web Client

[CyberHype]

Maybe this was asked, i reading things for 4 days now, and its very confusing, but i got this situation, some admin sabotaged the virtual machines and backups, he turned of machines and issued Delete from Disk command in vSphere Web Client, and everything gone, its there a way to recover any of this VMs?

Some VMs are thin provisioned, other are thick

All the folders gone, no archive left

Nothing has been written on datastore

using esxi 5.5 and vSphere Web Client 5.5.

The backup got overwritten and useless

Anyone have an idea how to recover this VMs?

[a_p_]

VMware unfortunately doesn't provide a built-in undelete function. Depending on the importance of the data you may either goolge for vmfs recovery to find applications which offer such functionality and try them, or immediately contact a data recovery company. Whatever you are going to do, make sure the datastore doesn't get modified in any way to prevent overwriting data!

André

[CyberHype]

Any recommendation on recovery software or tips?

The esxi server is offline as well, with the attached datastores.

Ps. I used vmfs-fuse and mounted the datastores in a recovery linux, and i can list the contents, but theres no visible deleted VM folders.

[a_nut_in]

continuum might be able to help here

[Vikas Shitole]

I suggest you to raise feature request @VMware. In future, it can be offered.

[CyberHype]

Any suggestion on programs to try recover?

[King_Robert]

Restore Virtual Machines or Files

Perform the following steps:

1. Log in to the Web Console.
2. Click My Data. On the My Data page, physical computers you have access to are listed under My Computers and virtual machines are listed under My Virtual Machines.

   Any virtual machine that is archived is marked with the archive icon ().

   You can recover a complete virtual machine or files.

   • To recover files:
     1. Click Restore under the Actions column for the VM; or click the VM in the Computers column and click Select Files on the page for the VM.
     2. On the Restore Files page, click an entry in the Name column to expand the volume and folder structure.
     3. Select one or more files or folders.
     4. Click Restore.
     5. On the Restore Options page. you can use the following options:
        • Destination Computer: Leave the default value to restore files to the source VM, or choose a different destination from the pull-down menu.
        • Destination Path: Enter a path or browse to select a folder where files can be restored. When browsing on the Select Restore Destination Path dialog, you can expand the tree on the left or click an entry on the right to display subfolders and files, then select an entry to be restored on the right and click Select.
        • Overwrite files and folders if they exist: Select to replace an existing file or folder.
     6. Click Restore Now to restore the selected files.