Failed VMware ESXi server, lost data store, 8 Dell SAS drives that wouldn't clone
Jason runs a managed IT services company in Sydney. One of his customers had a Dell server running VMware ESXi fail with an error. Their existing IT support company tried to bring it back, couldn't recover the missing snapshot, and couldn't locate the data store. Critical business folders sat trapped inside virtual machines that weren't mounting any more. The 8 SAS drives travelled to Payam Data Recovery's lab in Rhodes, New South Wales, where owner Payam Toloo took the case on.
In this VMware ESXi data recovery case study we walk through the full process: detecting and testing the 8 Dell ST300MM008 SAS 300GB drives on Atola Insight Forensic with SAS add-on (all 8 detected, SMART clean, media scans clean), the surprise clone failure on Atola where every sector returned unreadable, the pivot to PC-3000 SAS where every drive cloned in roughly 45 minutes, the RAID auto-rebuild from image files in UFS Explorer Professional Recovery, and the VMFS extraction that exposed the VMDK virtual machine files. Each VMDK was mounted, verified, and copied off cleanly.
Total turnaround: 12 hours. Every critical business folder was present and verified.
Four things make a case like this difficult: SAS hardware imaging, advanced cloning that handles drives one tool can't, RAID rebuild from image files (not physical drives), and VMFS file system access on a Windows PC that doesn't support VMFS natively. Most managed IT services companies and smaller data recovery operations will hit a wall at one of these.
Payam Data Recovery is an Australian company in business since 1998, with more than 150,000 successful recoveries. Labs in Sydney, Rhodes, Melbourne and Brisbane. Every step happens in house. Nothing is ever outsourced.
Three service tiers cover almost every situation: Economy for tight-budget cases (server jobs from around $1,000), Priority for jobs that need a faster path through the lab, and Emergency 24/7 for urgent cases.
International clients and MSP-referred cases welcome. Managed IT service providers, IT managers, and other data recovery companies from around the world send us cases regularly. Process: complete the free quote form, then if the indicative price works, fill out the submit-a-job form. Ship via FedEx, DHL, or UPS with the items declared as faulty hardware for repair with a very low declared value. We organise return shipping anywhere in the world.
RAID and server recovery service: https://www.payam.com.au/raid-data-re...
Free quote: https://www.payam.com.au/free-data-re...
Submit a job: https://www.payam.com.au/submit-a-new...
Phone: 1300 444 800
Email: [email protected]