And Dave? He called her later that week: “You restored from a delta? I didn’t think that was possible without losing data.”
vmkfstools -i "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/FinServe-07/FinServe-07-000014.vmdk" \ "/vmfs/volumes/datastore2/FinServe-07-Restored.vmdk" -d thin The ETA: 11 hours. restore vmware from delta vmdk
She used vmkfstools -D to inspect each delta. The deepest child ( FinServe-07-000014.vmdk ) had a valid descriptor but the parent CID didn’t match any actual parent. A typical "broken chain" from a storage migration gone wrong months ago. And Dave
She couldn’t skip it. The VM would boot but corrupt data silently. She used vmkfstools -D to inspect each delta
Maria documented everything and added a new rule: No snapshot older than 72 hours without a consolidation plan. She also wrote an internal tool called delta-forensics to map block dependencies across a chain.
She powered off the test VM, detached the old broken chain, attached the restored VMDK to the original FinServe-07, and powered it on.