Esxi Repair: Partition Table

She didn’t panic. ESXi has a built-in repair tool: partedUtil fix but only if you know the original partition layout. She didn’t. She did have one clue: a working identical host in the same cluster.

She mounted it: esxcfg-volume -M 5d2a8b2e-fc0f2b10-1234-7845c4f5a9b1 esxi repair partition table

esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false echo "All restored. Go to sleep, Lena." She didn’t sleep. She wrote documentation: “How to repair ESXi partition table using partedUtil – a near-death experience.” She didn’t panic

ls /vmfs/volumes/5d2a8b2e... → all VMs were there. She restarted the VMs one by one. By 2:30 AM, services were restored. She did have one clue: a working identical

The command completed silently. She held her breath and typed: partedUtil get … – the table matched the healthy host.

She logged into the DCIM console. The HP ProLiant DL380 was still running, but the local VMFS datastore was inaccessible. She tried ls /vmfs/volumes/ — empty.

Then she used partedUtil get /vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0 – it returned garbage: partitions overlapping, wrong end sectors.