How to restore deleted vmdk from VMFS5

Yesterday I have got an E-mail from somebody asking me how to restore deleted vmdk from VMFS5. They deleted VM but realised there are very important data.

Typical answer would be - "Restore from backup" - however they wrote that they don't have backup.

Fortunately, I have never had a need to restore deleted vmdk so I was starting to do some quick research (aka googling :-) )

I found VMware KB 1015413 with following statement ...

"VMware does not offer data recovery services. This article provides contact information for data recovery service providers.
Note: VMware does not endorse or recommend any particular third-party utility, nor is this list meant to be exhaustive."

I was sitting in the VMware office so I have asked colleagues if they have any practical experience with undeleting vmdk from VMFS.  One colleague of mine suggested utility "VMFS Recovery" from DiskInternals.com. He had positive experience with this particular tool. His suggestion was to use trial version which should help to identify if recovery is possible and buy full version for recovery.

Warning: Use any third party tool for recovery on your own risk.

I absolutely understand that if you lose your important data you would like to try anything to recover it back however here are my general thoughts:

• Clone or snapshot your raw disk (LUN) with VMFS before any recovery (use storage array capabilities, third party imaging tool or *nix dd command) 
• If your data are very valuable for you consider engagement of data recovery expert services
• When  you do recovery by your self I wish you good luck.

If you have some other experience with this topic please share it with community in comments. 

Recovering from a Forgotten Password on the Force10 S series switch

I've just spent several hours to find the recovery procedure from forgotten password. Google returned just one relevant result to the Force10 tech tip page "How Do I Reset the S-Series to Factory Defaults?". However the procedure doesn't work because there is not "Option menu" during system boot. It is most probably old and deprecated procedure.

Here is the new procedure so I hope google will return it for other people looking for correct procedure.

Procedure to recovery from forgotten password on Force10 S-series switches:

1. Use serial console
2. Power off and then Power on all of the power modules
3. Wait for message similar to "Hit Esc key to interrupt autoboot: 5" and press Esc key to go to Boot Loader (uBoot) interactive shell
4. Change environment variable – setenv stconfigignore true - (uBoot - boot loader interactive shell)
5. Save the changes - saveenv - (uBoot - boot loader interactive shell)
6. Continue to boot the system – boot  - (uBoot - boot loader interactive shell)
7. Default configuration is loaded so console login authentication is disabled by default
8. Go to EXEC mode - en - (FTOS command line)
9. Load startup configuration -  copy startup-config running-config - (FTOS command line)
10. Now you can reconfigure the switch to change or add user login credentials
11. Save configuration -  copy running-config startup-config - (FTOS command line)
12. Reload the switch just for verification -  reload - (FTOS command line)

This procedure was tested on Force10 S4810 and S60.