I recently had the misfortune of accidentally deleting a critical VMFS datastore on my ESXi host, which resulted in the loss of several important virtual machines. Panic set in, but fortunately, I came across the "Undelete VMFS Datastore" tool.
Often, the datastore isn't truly deleted; it's just not visible. This works if the datastore was removed from a host but the LUN itself wasn't wiped.
: Perform a storage rescan on all hosts to ensure the volume didn't simply lose its mount. 3. Manual Recovery via Command Line (Expert Level)
: Run fdisk -l to find the device with the missing partition table. undelete vmfs datastore
Immediately after a deletion, the storage device appears as a "blank" or "unpartitioned" disk. The worst thing you can do is create a new VMFS datastore on that same device. A new datastore will write a fresh partition table and file system header, potentially overwriting the metadata that points to your VMs. Once that happens, true recovery becomes a nightmare.
An accidentally deleted VMFS datastore is a terrifying event, but it is rarely a disaster. In most environments, a simple brings everything back in under two minutes. The key is avoiding the panic-driven mistake of recreating the datastore.
If a rescan doesn’t work, the partition table may be corrupted but not overwritten. You’ll need ESXi’s command line. I recently had the misfortune of accidentally deleting
Identify your disk (e.g., naa.600507... ).
Use partedUtil to create a new partition table and partition matching the original geometry.
If you have accidentally deleted a VMFS datastore, . Do not create a new datastore on the same LUN, or the data will be overwritten and lost forever. This works if the datastore was removed from
Once the partition is recreated, ESXi should recognize the VMFS signature. You may need to perform the re-signaturing steps from Method 1 to mount it.
The tool was able to recover all of my data, including the VMFS partition, the VMs, and their associated files. I was impressed by the tool's ability to reconstruct the datastore and recover all of my data.