Lost FreeNAS - Help! (VMware)

[hpnas]

The way I had FreeNAS configured was:
VMware vSphere 5.1
FreeNAS installed on a VM on the RAID Array
The "data drive" was a VMDK on a single drive and 500 GB in size

I was only able to recover the single 500 GB VMDK and the not the FreeNAS App VM.

How much of the FreeNAS App configuration do I need to know to get the data off the VMDK? Can I just recreate the FreeNAS VM and add in the recovered 500 GB VMDK file as a drive?

 

[dlavigne]

Yes, you can re-import the virtual disk after reinstalling FreeNAS. Though that won't prevent future problems associated with running FreeNAS in a VM (search forums on why that is a bad idea).

 

[jgreco]

For all the times we've seen virtualization train wrecks, it is actually nice to see something where the situation appears to be recoverable.

Please do see if you can determine how you managed to lose the FreeNAS app VMDK though. That's relatively disturbing.

Also, I'm going to refer you to this:

http://forums.freenas.org/threads/h...nfiguration-database-backup.10735/#post-48571

You can find discussion of various config database backup strategies, including the one we use here which is to periodically snap a copy to the pool using a script. If you were running something like that, it can save a lot of frustration and effort if you have a complicated sharing environment, network config, or whatever.