Virtual machine recovery
A missing or corrupt VM can involve the physical disks, RAID, SAN or NAS, VMFS datastore, VMDK descriptor, flat disk, snapshot chain, virtual file system, or application data inside the guest.
Understand the symptom
VMware virtual disks can use descriptor files, flat extents, sparse formats, delta disks, change-block tracking, and snapshot metadata. The datastore sits above local RAID, SAN, NAS, or hyperconverged storage. A missing descriptor may be repairable while a damaged extent contains actual guest sectors. Snapshot order, parent identifiers, provisioning type, VM configuration, encryption, and application consistency all affect recovery.
What you may see
The physical storage, RAID, LUN, VMFS metadata, partition, or presentation path may be unavailable.
The small metadata file, snapshot chain, parent identifier, or referenced extent may be missing or inconsistent.
Insufficient space, broken chains, locked files, storage errors, or damaged deltas can block consolidation.
Guest file systems and databases may be inconsistent even when the virtual disk chain attaches.
Protect the source
It can modify parent disks and deltas and is unsafe when the chain or storage is already damaged.
The guest writes logs, journals, swap, and application data as soon as it starts.
RAID member errors or unstable LUN storage must be addressed before trusting datastore repair.
Do this now
Prevent restarts, replication, backup retries, snapshot creation, consolidation, and storage migration.
Keep VMX, VMDK descriptors and extents, snapshots, logs, NVRAM, and related metadata together.
Document host, datastore, LUN, RAID or NAS, disk members, snapshots, encryption, and recent changes.
Specify databases, servers, dates, and the minimum useful recovery point rather than requesting only a bootable VM.
NEPFOSYS process
Member disks, RAID, SAN, NAS, or datastore access are evaluated before virtual-disk repairs.
Descriptors, extents, parent relationships, snapshots, and provisioning details are assembled on copies.
File systems, databases, and priority workloads are checked in an isolated environment; production return is a separate phase.
A clear next step
Start a case with the exact symptoms, incident timeline, prior attempts, encryption details, and the files that matter most. NEPFOSYS will route the case to the appropriate DFW intake or nationwide mail-in path.
Start with a case reviewQuestions, answered
Not on the only copy when the chain or storage is damaged. Consolidation writes to virtual disks and can make an inconsistent chain harder to reconstruct.
Not always. The guest file system, database, transaction logs, encryption, and application dependencies must also be consistent and validated.
Keep them. Descriptors contain geometry, extent names, provisioning information, and parent relationships. Missing descriptors can sometimes be reconstructed, but the originals are valuable evidence.
DFW local · Nationwide mail-in