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This report provides an overview of the tools and methodologies available for repairing VMware VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) datastores. VMFS is a high-performance cluster file system designed to store virtual machine disk images. While robust, it is susceptible to corruption due to hardware failures, network partitions (in NFS/iSCSI), and sudden power outages. This document details the native vmfs-tools suite, ESXi command-line utilities, and third-party options available for data recovery.
When native tools cannot mount the volume or you see errors like "Failed to repair volume," commercial software is your next step. vmfs repair tools
vmfs-fsck -V 64 -t 3 /dev/disks/naa.XXXXXX This report provides an overview of the tools
| | Recommended Tool | Success Rate | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Minor metadata inconsistency | vmfs-fsck (native) | High (if unmounted) | | Accidentally deleted VM folder | vmfs-undelete (native) | Medium (time-sensitive) | | Datastore shows as "not formatted" | DiskInternals VMFS Recovery | Medium-High | | RAID controller corruption + VMFS damage | UFS Explorer | High (with RAID knowledge) | | Formatted VMFS to another file system | Stellar Phoenix | Medium | | Physical drive has bad sectors | Clone with ddrescue first, then any tool | Variable | This document details the native vmfs-tools suite, ESXi
: Native tools rarely fix severe metadata corruption (e.g., damaged file allocation table, corrupted .vmdk descriptor files). When vmfs-fsck fails or aborts, you need third-party tools.