ESXi needs fixing

Mcneck · October 23, 2020

Hey everyone,

I am looking for someone who can give me a quick headsup regarding VMs on an ESXi Server. I need to warn you, I am an absolute novice in regards to ESXi stuff.

Long story short: I somehow fucked up a Snapshot of a machine and could not get it deleted. I got this issue somewhat resolved with resolution 1 from this guide HERE.

So for like 5 minutes everything was fine, until I tried to delete the old VM without deleting the two .vmdk files which make up the two partitions of the VM I saved.

Because I thought I could easily move the .vmdk files to the directory of the new VM, I admit, I am stupid.

So now the two .vmdk files are neither in the old folder of VM1 nor in the folder of the freshly created VM2. I can however see these files if I were to setup a third VM and look for existing vmdk-files.

Is there a way to create a new VM, connect the existing .vmdk files to it, and move these files also into the corresponding folder, and finally delete all other VMs?

I know its probably difficult to understand what I tried to explain here, please understand, that I have no experience in this whatsoever... .

Best regards

Mcneck

Jarsky · October 24, 2020

So there are basic files that make up your VM.

VMX = Virtual Machine Configuration file

VMEM = Virtual Memory file

<machine>.VMDK = Virtual Disk characteristics file

<machine>-flat.VMDK = Virtual Disk data file

NVRAM = BIOS/UEFI file

These are the basic files you must have for a VM to operate in VMware.

For resolution 1 in your guide, you should have only deleted <machine>-delta.VMDK files which are changes that have been made after the snapshot that have not been commited into the flat file (your base disk).

So back to your question. You should have *only* touched the <machine>-delta.VMDK files, are you saying you're missing all your VMDK's?

Did you create your new VM and copy your existing VMDK's to the new VM's datastore folder, before trying to delete your old VM? If so there should be no reason for the VMDK's to just disappear.

When you say you can "see" these files, have you tried setting up VM3 by selecting the disk you can see? It's worth noting that in the Datastore "Browser" you cannot see the -flat.vmdk file, you can only see the descriptor .vmdk. So if you still have the -flat.vmdk's this is the sort of behavior you would expect, as they cannot be see in the browser, but can be seen when setting up a new VM. If it is the flat file, then when you select it for your new VM, it will automatically create a new descriptor .vmdk file.

And yes you can easily move your .vmdk files around if need be, but if you re-create the VM, theres no need to move any files. Use the new VM3, and then delete the traces of VM1/VM2 when you've confirmed its working and your vmdk path is to the folder for VM3.