Re: VMDK / API Snapshot woes

I'm not an Exchange expert, so I'm currently not aware of available tools to extract data from the Exchange DB, but at this point I'd at least create a backup/clone of the VM (including the snapshots) that can be used to somehow try, and extract/recover missing data.

To achieve this in your environment - assuming sufficient free disk space - you could:

1. shut down the Exchange server, if it's currently running
2. fix the virtual disks' snapshot chains
   --> modify/edit the snapshot .vmdk files so that their "parentCID" matches their respective parents "CID" (do NOT modify the base .vmdk files!)
3. create a copy of the VM's current configuration (.vmx) file, e.g. "Exchange-Tmp.vmx"
4. modify/edit the copied .vmx file so that the virtual disks point to the snapshot .vmdk files, and change the "displayName" to s.th. like "Exchange-Tmp"
5. register the modified .vmx file in the inventory (do NOT power it on!)
6. clone the VM from the UI
7. unregister the temporary VM again to avoid later confusion
8. disable the network in the cloned VM's settings
9. create a snapshot on the cloned VM, so that you can always revert to this state if required

Once that is done, you could take the reverted VM back into production, and still have the chance to try and recover data from the clone.

As aside note: Veeam lately reported a know issue with CBT based backups after reverting to snapshots, which - from what I understood - VMware is currently working on. To make sure that you have consistent backups of the production machine, I'd suggest you create an Active Full backup asap.

Please fell free to ask, if something that I wrote is unclear.

André