Virtual Machine Gone Missing: Ontrack to the Rescue

A government entity experienced a grim situation when a synchronization error with vSAN 6 cluster drives caused the hosts to repeatedly crash.  There were 56 drives, each 1 TB in size.  After one host crashed, a Windows server Virtual Machine (VM) went missing.  When you lose confidential files and sensitive materials, it is easy to begin thinking the worst.  Data recovery specialists were able to find the lost data.  Here’s how:

The Problem

A 2 TB volume that contained tagged image format (TIF) legal files disappeared from the drives.  As one can imagine, when pertinent files containing sensitive information disappear, the need to recover the missing data is time-sensitive and critical.

The Solution

Ontrack was enlisted to assist with the recovery and developed new tools to support the new Virsto data layout used in vSAN 6.  Through the creation and usage of new tools, Ontrack engineers were successful in finding the missing Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) pointers.  The engineers then followed the pointers to one of the drives that contained a copy of the VMDK in unallocated space and were then able to extract it for the customer.

Learn more about the recovery process. Engineers at Ontrack use proprietary tools and methods to perform recoveries on virtual machines.