Recover PVE VM from vma.dat file?

[stefanzman]

For a VM that has been lost without full backups.

Is this possible?

 

[tom]

this looks like an incomplete backup, you cannot recover it.

 

[stefanzman]

Thanks, Tom.

The customer is pretty desperate at this point. If the actual VM itself cannot be recovered, it is at all possible to use forensic methods to extract specific data from the disk storage files within? Is the vma.dat file readable at all?

 

[tom]

I do not know this in detail as there is limited information here and I am not data rescue expert - I do backups and I do test restores regularly.

But as the backup is not complete its pretty clear that a restore cannot work.

 

[stefanzman]

I do not know this in detail as there is limited information here and I am not data rescue expert - I do backups and I do test restores regularly.

But as the backup is not complete its pretty clear that a restore cannot work.

Yes. I figured a standard VM restore would not be out of the question. But I was wondering if the dat file itself could be a examined for some sort of partial data extracttion of files and folders that existed on virtual disk of the VM?

 

[wbumiller]

You can run `vma extract vma.dat SomeDirName` and see what comes out. There's a chance you'll get a disk image file `SomeDirName/tmp-disk-drive-scsi0.raw` for example, containing the equivalent of having filled the VM's drive with zeros starting at some random point in the middle wherever the backup got stopped. After plugging that into a VM you can use the usual file recovery tools like with a physical disk and then it'll boil down to luck...