Recovering a Deleted VVol VM after 24 Hours

Now that we've reviewed how you can recover a VM that was deleted within that 24 hour window, how would you recover the deleted VM after 24 hours?

Let's see how to recover the deleted VM with the same scenarios as outlined previously. The difference here is that the volume groups and volumes have now been eradicated since the 24 hours has past.

With vCenter Storage Policies (SPBM)

We have a VM that was using a Storage Policy that had local snapshots taken. With those snapshots, we have the Data Volumes backed up. This means we have Data Volumes that we can recover. We will have to first create a new VM with the same amount of VMDKs with the same sizes and then overwrite the data volumes with the snapshots of the deleted VMs.

>> Here is the Workflow to recover a VVol VM from FlashArray snapshots: (click to expand)

Create a new VM; this is covered earlier here.
Identify the the new VMs Data volumes, here with VVol-VM-2, Data-440a997f is VMDK 1 and Data-b216fedd is VMDK 2:

Identify the snapshots for the data volumes that will be used to overwrite the new data volumes. One way to do this is via the purecli:


# purevol list --snap *VVol-VM-2-*
Name                                                                             Size  Source                                                       Created                  SerialVVol-pgroup-snap-A.339.vvol-VVol-VM-2-d58d1a92-vg/Config-b5aa6153  4G    -       2019-05-06 10:41:00 PDT  1037B35FD0EF40A500093D96
VVol-pgroup-snap-A.339.vvol-VVol-VM-2-d58d1a92-vg/Config-b5aa6153  4G    -       2019-05-06 10:41:00 PDT  1037B35FD0EF40A500093D96
VVol-pgroup-snap-A.339.vvol-VVol-VM-2-d58d1a92-vg/Data-060d23c1    200G  -       2019-05-06 10:41:00 PDT  1037B35FD0EF40A500093D97
VVol-pgroup-snap-A.339.vvol-VVol-VM-2-d58d1a92-vg/Data-b88a7c8b    40G   -       2019-05-06 10:41:00 PDT  1037B35FD0EF40A500093D98

Here the snapshot for Data-060d23c1 is for VMDK 1 and the snapshot for Data-b88a7c8b is for VMDK 2.

Copy out the snapshot volumes and overwrite the new data volumes. In this example Data-060d23c1 will overwrite Data-440a997f and Data-b88a7c8b will overwrite Data-b216fedd:

Once the Copy operations are complete, navigate to vCenter, power on the VM and confirm the application/files are all in place.

With vCenter Managed Snapshots

As managed snapshots are destroyed when a VVol VM is deleted, they in turn will also be eradicated after the 24 hour period has passed. Without array protection group snapshots or replicated snapshots the VM will be lost.

With Array Protection Groups

As long as there are snapshots with the data volumes in them, then the VM can be recovered. The same process outlined with the Storage Policies above will be the workflow to recover the VM.

With Manual Snapshots

If 24 hours have passed and should the manual snapshot have only been taken with the Pure vSphere Web Client Plugin or have manually been taken on the volume directly, then the manual snapshots have been eradicated as well. In this case, lesson learned: use SPBM with snapshot or replication schedules.

No Snapshots?

Unfortunately without any snapshots the VM is lost after the volume group and volumes have been eradicated. Lesson to learn here, use SPBM with snapshot or replication schedules.