 Hello everybody! Watch this video to find out how to recover data from VMware ESXi server hypervisor and VMFS file system. We will explore how to create a Windows virtual machine on ESXi server, how to manage snapshots, how to recover virtual machine files from the disk of a nonoperable server, how to restore operability of a virtual machine and how to recover information from VMDK files. VMware ESXi is a hypervisor that can be installed onto a physical server and lets you run several operating systems on a single host computer. These operating systems work separately from each other, but they may interact with other computers over the network. Visit our channel for a detailed video tutorial on how to install an ESXi hypervisor. Check the link below. For status, let's see how you can create a virtual machine. Open the client machine, open the browser and type the service IP address. Enter the administrator's login and password. Open the navigator and go to the tab Virtual Machines. In the window on the right, click Create Register VM. In the window that opens, choose Create a new virtual machine. Then give the name of the virtual machine and specify its operating system family and version. After that, choose the storage for the virtual machine files. While configuring the parameters, select the number of processors and the amount of RAM to be allocated for the virtual machine. Also remember to allocate some disk space. Click Add Other Device and select CD-DVD Drive. Select the disk type for it, data store ISO file and give the pass to the ISO file of the operating system. If there is no such image on your server, then at the top of the window that opens, click Upload and give the pass to the previously downloaded ISO image of the operating system that is stored on the client machine. Then click Open and wait for the upload to be completed. After that, highlight it and select Next and then Finish. Now the only thing left to do is to start it and install the operating system. Select the virtual machine and click Power On. The actual process of installing an operating system to a virtual machine is the same as if you were installing it to your computer, so just follow the wizard directions. When the installation process is over, the virtual machine will be ready to use. The vSphere hypervisor lets you take snapshots of a virtual machine. A snapshot captures the state and data of a virtual machine at the specific time when the snapshot was taken. Snapshots can help you restore the operating system when files are deleted accidentally or when you want to return to previous settings. To take a snapshot, select a virtual machine that is powered off, select Snapshot, take Snapshot. Give it a name and then click Take Snapshot. Now that you have the snapshot, you can revert the operating system to that snapshot at any time. When you go back to a snapshot, all settings, changes or disks added after the snapshot was taken will be restored to their previous state. If you need to do it, right-click on the virtual machine, Snapshot, Restore Snapshot. You will see a warning saying that the current state of the virtual machine will be lost unless you save it in a snapshot. Click Restore to confirm your decision. In the Snapshot Manager, you can always remove any snapshot you have taken before. Select the snapshot you want to delete, click Delete Snapshot and then click Remove to confirm. In the Manager, you can choose to remove a single snapshot, or all of them by clicking Delete All Snapshots. If you have accidentally removed a wrong snapshot of virtual machine files, if your server broke down or if you lost access to your virtual machine, don't worry, but use the Specialized Data Recovery tool – Hatman Partition Recovery. As we know, files of virtual machines managed by EXSI subhypervisor are stored on the disk in volumes having the MFS file system. The biggest problem is that when an ESSI host breaks down, there is no way to retrieve the information stored on its disks, unless you use some specialized software. The matter is that classic Windows and Linux operating systems cannot recognize volumes or partitions with the MFS file system. However, Hatman Partition Recovery offers complete support for the MFS file system, including its latest version, and it supports ASSYSPARS Snapshot files as well. ASSYSPARS is a new virtual disk format similar to VMFS SPARS, but with some improvements and new features. One of the differences between ASSYSPARS and VMFS SPARS is that ASSYSPARS uses 4-kilobyte blocks in Congress with 512-byte blocks in VMFS SPARS. In the end, it supports files up to 2 terabytes thanks to having a 64-bit structure. Most often, virtual machines are stored on a RAID system, and even with the well-known reliability of disk arrays, we cannot exclude the chances of their breaking down. To rebuild a damaged RAID system inside the broken server and recover the virtual machine files, use Hatman RAID Recovery. Take the disks out of the server and connect them to a Windows computer. Download, install and run the program. Hatman RAID Recovery will automatically rebuild the damaged RAID system with the available disks. All you need to do is to scan it and restore the files you need. In my case, the virtual machines are stored on one disk without RAID. Right-click on the disk and choose the scan type to start searching for files. Fast scan will check it in a few seconds and display the files. If the program failed to find the lost files with Fast scan, go for full analysis, specify the file system and start the search. In more complicated situations, you can find files by their signatures. To have the program do it, check the box for content-aware analysis. In my case, Fast scan will be enough. After that, go to the directory where virtual hard disk files were stored. By default, they are located here. Look for the files with the name of your virtual machine and the extension VMDK. Snapshot files will have the extension sesports.vmdk and configuration files can be distinguished by the extension VMX. To avoid any issues with importing files in the future, it is better to completely recover the virtual machine folder. Find the files you want to recover, click Recovery, select where you want to save them and click Recover again. When the entire process is over, you will find the recovered files in the folder that you have chosen. Now, if you need to restore a probability of the virtual machine, the recovered files should be uploaded to the server and registered with the vSphere web client. To do that, enable SSH access to the server and connect to it by SFTP. Open the virtual machine files to the server and into this specific folder. Then open the web client, click Host, Create or Register a virtual machine. Open the last option, Register an existing virtual machine. After that, specify the folder containing the recovered virtual machine files by choosing select one or more virtual machines, a datastore or a directory. Select. Next. Finish. The program will upload the files and the virtual machine will appear on this list. Now you can start it and access the files you need. If you tried the first method and the virtual machine starts with an error, then try another method instead. Create a new virtual machine and while configuring its hardware, remove the hard disk. After that, click Add hard disk, choose the second option Existing hard disk, give the path to the folder containing virtual machine files, vmdk, select, next and finish. Now try to boot the virtual machine and see if there are any errors. Sometimes this method helps to fix the boot problem. If you tried to boot a virtual machine and encounter an error, if the files are damaged or if you accidentally removed some information while working with a virtual machine, don't worry. Atman Partition Recovery All the lost data will be back. Our program supports datorecovery from dynamic and fixed-size virtual hard disks, restore points and operating system snapshots. Atman Partition Recovery lets you restore both virtual machine files, vmdk and any data removed from vmdk disks. Also, it can recover data files from formatted virtual hard disks and it doesn't matter if the disk used to be a dynamic or a fixed-size one. If they have recovered, vmdk files or copy them to the computer, you need to upload them to our program. In the main window, open the Tools tab and choose Mount disk. There are two ways to mount it – choose a raw disk image if necessary or choose virtual machines. After choosing the second option, you can see the list of files and tools that our program supports. Check the required image type, give the path to the folder containing virtual hard disk files and click Open. The program will upload and display all virtual disks and snapshot files which exist in this folder. As you can see, in addition to the main disks, there are also restore point files and snapshots of the virtual machine. The virtual disk file which is currently in use by the virtual machine will be marked as Active. Other files are snapshots and restore points and using the date of the activation, you can decide which one you need to recover. Check the box next to the disk you are interested in and click Next. It will appear in the drag manager immediately. Right-click on the disk and choose Open. Select the scan type and choose Fast scan for status. If the fast scan can't find the required files, then go for Full analysis. Full analysis and specify the file system for this disk. Then go to the folder where the files used to be stored and look for the ones you need to restore. Select them and click Recovery. Select the disk and folder and click Recovery again. That is all for now. Hopefully, this video was useful. Remember to click the Like button and subscribe to our channel. Leave comments to ask questions. Thank you for watching. And good luck! While you are watching this video, civilians in Ukraine are dying from attacks in the apartments of the Russian Federation. Putin's insane regime has attacked a peaceful country in the very heart of Europe. Support the Ukrainian army by making a contribution to the font Come Back Alive. Click the QR code or the link below the video to transfer any amount of money that will boost claiming resistance and help it counter Russia's designable innovation.