Re: Lost all ESXi 4 config and VMs on host reboot

kimaldavid wrote:

 

As I was unable to install a 64bit guest on a remote server I had a colleague change the bios to allow VT on a Dell PE.  I shut down the guests, went into maintenance mode and then shut down the host.  The server was powered on and the simple change made in the bios.  On start up ESXi loaded fine but with a different IP as had changed to DHCP, previously on static.  We could no longer log on until we tried a blank password.  The IP was reset and after logging in from my remote connection I was now on a temporary license with all VMs missing.

 

I re-added the license and thankfully the datastores were all still intact.  It was remarkably easy to recover from what could have been a minor disaster as they are production servers.  ESXi is running on a USB stick and the datastores on raid5 local disks.

 

Any idea of what could have happened?

 

Thanks

Hi please follow below steps to restore network settings in virtual machine

To save and restore your settings:

1. Log on to the source server as an Administrator.
2. Open the Network Connections from the Start menu, and record of the network interface names. These names are used to restore the network settings.
3. Open a command prompt. For more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892).
4. Run the command:
   
   netsh interface ip dump >> %systemroot%\NetworkSettings.txt
   
   
5. Set all the network interfaces to DHCP (non-static) IP addresses, if possible.
6. Perform the conversion with VMware Converter.
7. Start the newly created virtual machine on the destination.
8. Log on to the source server as an Administrator.
9. Open the Network Connections folder.
10. Rename the interfaces in the virtual machine to match the same names that were on the source server.
11. Open a command prompt. For more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892) .
12. Run the command:
    
    netsh -f %systemroot%\NetworkSettings.txt
    
    
    
    
    
    
    for more you can follow this link -http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1015572
    
    

     

    Yours,

    Satya