A couple days ago I was asked the question “An admin deleted the vmdk file associated with a VM, there are no snapshots or backups of the VM . Can we restore this VM somehow?“. I believe in backups, I like to have my VM’s backed up so that I can depend on them for events just like this very issue. At first I was stumped, until the {vm-name}.flat.vmdk was mentioned. That’s when I remembered a method to recover a VM using the vm-flat.vmdk file that I had actually done 2-3 years ago.
Example preparation
For this example I’ve created a Server 2012 virtual machine (called Win2012) and placed a text file on the desktop called “Important Info”. I then deleted all the files associated with that VM with the exception of the Win2012-flat.vmdk file, as seen in the image at top.
After the files had been deleted I tried to power up the VM knowing it would not and received this error.
Ok, now on to how to restore a VM with a missing .VMDK file.
How to Recover a VM using a vm-flat.vmdk file
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I created a new VM called Recovery with the same specs as my Win2012 server (2vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB HHD).
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Enable SSH on the host and logged in via PuTTy (or WinSCP) and verified the contents of Win2012 folder:
cd /vmfs/volumes/vmNFS02/Win2012/
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Then navigate to the Recovery VM folder.
cd ../Recovery/ -
Rename the original Recovery-flat.vmdk file to Recovery-flat.vmdk.bak
mv Recovery-flat.vmdk Recovery-flat.vmdk.bak
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Now just copy the Win2012-flat.vmdk file from the Win2012 folder over to the Recovery folder (Note: This step could take several minutes):
cp /vmfs/volumes/vmNFS02/Win2012/Win2012-flat.vmdk Recovery-flat.vmdk
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Finally, power up the new Recovery VM and your old VM (Win2012) should be back online good as new!
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You can also go back and delete the Recovery-flat.vmdk.bak file as it won’t be needed.
So even though restoring a VM from a -flat.vmdk file is pretty easy it isn’t my recommended method, you’re far better protected with good, reliable backups, then on hoping that the -flat.vmdk file is still laying around somewhere.
