Recovering a Deleted VVol VM VMDK after 24 Hours

In the event that you have deleted a VVol VMDK and the destroyed data VVol is eradicated, there is still the workflow to recover that volume. However, it's dependant on having some form of backup of that data volume. Two factors here though, manual volume snapshots and managed snapshots of that data VVol will be eradicated along with the source VVol. This means that you will need an Array based snapshot

With vCenter Storage Policies (SPBM)

This one is straight forward and almost the exact same process covered in Recovering a Deleted VVol VM after 24 hours. The difference being that you are only recovering a Data VVol and don't have to create a brand new VM. Rather you just need to create a new virtual disk of the same size on the VVol VM, locate the volume snapshot, and then copy the snapshot out and overwrite the new VMDK.

Here are some gifs that cover the process of creating the new vmdk, overwriting the new data vvol with the snapshot volume and then refreshing the volume in the guest OS.

>> Click to expand and view the workflow:

First part is to create a new Virtual Disk for the VVol VM. This will in turn create a new Data VVol on the FlashArray. Make sure it's the same size as the Data VVol you are working to recover.

Copy the name of the new Data VVol and then locate the snapshot that you want to recover from and then find the Data VVol and copy it out.

Here I log into the VM and refresh the Disks. Then the volume shows back up as mounted and everyone is happy.

Overall, not too bad with array based snapshots.

With vCenter Managed Snapshots

An interesting part with managed snapshots, when you destroy a VVol VMDK, vCenter does not issue a destroy and eradicate request to the VASA provider for either the Data VVol or it's snapshot volume on the FlashArray. So, in theory you should be able to destroy the FA objects and use the plugin to recover them or use them to copy out and overwrite a new empty VVold VMDK. I'm looking more into this, if this is an issue on VMware's side or on Pure's side. You'd be able to follow a similar process though of recovering from a managed snapshot, you'd still need to copy out the data volume or snapshot of the data volume and overwrite the new volume. The difference now would be that you wouldn't need to copy the volume out from a FlashArray snapshot. Stay tuned for more updates on this section though.

With Array Protection Groups

Essentially the exact same process as the SPBM section, so see above.

With Manual Snapshots

Much like the VM section, when a FlashArray Volume is eradicated, so are any manual volume snapshots. You need a FlashArray protection group snapshot to recover the eradicated Data VVol. Another great reason to use Storage Policies.

No Snapshots?

Without FlashArray snapshots, then there is no way to recover that Data VVol from the FlashArray perspective. Now, maybe you have a backup of the Data VVol with another 3rd party backup provider or have a clone of that VM somewhere. Then you'll need to use those to recover the deleted VMDK.