I was donated a Dell T420 server which I turned into a web server. I've installed ESXi 6 into which I created a Linux Mint LAMP server for hosting a few non profits and a few small business owners I know for free. This is a hobby level thing - not for money. I am very new to all of this.
There is a pair of 500GB SAS drives in this. One is Datastore 1 and the other Datastore 2. The web server is installed in Datastore 1.
At one point the web server crashed and it appeared I have run out of disk space so it wouldn't reboot. After reading a lot online it was suggested to see if removing one or more snapshots might not free up the space. I only had two snapshots in place. I deleted the oldest one. However, this did not appear to free up enough space. I did not want to delete my only remaining snapshot.
It was then suggested that during the process the associated VMDK files in the datastore may not have been cleaned out properly during the snapshot deletion. I browsed the datastore in which are several different files LOG files, XML files, VMSN, NVRAM, VMSD, VMX, VMXF, and a series of VMDK files, which I've been told would the be the "main" files for the virtual machine.
The files I had listed were:
Webserver0.vmdk
Webserver0-000001.vmdk
Webserver0-000002.vmdk
Webserver0-000003.vmdk
Webserver0-000004.vmdk
Webserver0-000005.vmdk
Webserver0-000006.vmdk <---This one being the newest date.
Not knowing what to do with these I right clicked on the Webserver0-000001.vmdk to see what was available and saw a dropdown menu of options. However, I may have accidentally double clicked and hit the "delete" option from the menu. Before I knew it that file was gone. I then could not boot the VM after. All I get is an error message:
Failed to power on virtual machine WebServer. File /vmfs/volumes/58866b0f-0a0319b0-38e0-e0db55027e66/WebServer/WebServer0-000001.vmdk was not found
I looked back in the datastore and now in place of that file is a Webserver0-000001-delta.vmdk file instead.
I assume all these files are required for the VM to operate? Have I just royally screwed myself and all these people I've been hosting? Is there a way to recover or rebuild that file and restore this machine? I do not have a backup since Veeam said their products won't work with free ESXi. I also have no money and cannot afford to pay a support ticket or buy recovery software that cost $699 at minimum!
I need help desperately!