Restore VMware virtual machine from VMDK file
Here you will find out:
- how to restore a VMware virtual machine from VMDK
- what would you need for that
- how DiskInternals VMFS Recovery can help you
Are you ready? Let's read!
VMware VM
By creating a virtual machine in VMware, you can eliminate a number of inconveniences.
Any virtual machine includes software and built-in applications, while it exists completely independent of the underlying OS. Thus, you can create several VMs on one computer and thereby get many advantages:
- Performance on each VM will be improved due to the distribution of “responsibilities” between each of them
- Any errors on one VM do not affect the operation of the others
- You can transfer the VM to any host, so it is mobile and convenient to use
To restore a VMware virtual machine from VMDK, what do you need?
You must locate the existing VMDK (virtual machine disk) file before you can begin restoring a VMware virtual machine. This file is crucial since it performs a crucial role and contains all the data kept in the VM. There are various data files, including flat.vmdk and.vmdk. You must locate the flat.vmdk file in order to recover VM VMware from a VMDK file.
VMware virtual machine recovery in vSphere
Restoring a VM from a VMDK file is possible by creating a new virtual machine configuration file. In this case, you are using an existing .vmdk file.
Tip: Learn more about VMDK file format here!In the VMware guide for restoring a VM in vSphere, it says that you need to “remove from inventory” your virtual machine. That method is suitable if you have a backup because otherwise, you can lose your data.
How to restore a VMDK file in a VMware workstation with VMFS Recovery
If you lost, deleted or for any other reason don’t have a flat VMDK file, you need to restore it using the software, because there are no other options. You definitely need a VMDK file to recreate a VM.
It is recommended to use DiskInternals VMFS Recovery — software for professionals and, at the same time, understandable and effective for casual users. This application is really cool thanks to many factors, and here are just some of them:
- You can restore both .vmdk files and -flat.vmdk files.
- It works with VMFS partitions based on ESX / ESXi VMware® ESX Server™ and VMware vSphere 3.5-6.5.
- FAT32, RAIDZ, HFS + and ReFS ZFS, EXT4, NTFS 5, EFS, ReiserFS, XFS, Hikvision, etc. are the file systems that this program works with.
- If the VMDK is on any of the RAID levels, that's no problem, as DiskInternals VMFS Recovery will handle restoring a VMDK file on VMware.
And now that you can restore the VMDK file, you can try to recreate the virtual machine with this file.