ESXi host appears to have reverted to old configuration

Hi Level 1 friends.

I’ve an ESXi host that rebooted and appears to have picked up a configuration from 4 years ago. How is this possible?

How can I either find my current config? OR is there an installation i could boot from a USB and then copy the virtual machine folders?

Has this ever happened to you before?

When it booted this time, it is looking for hardware that does not exist. It allows me to browse the datastore but the folders listed are for VM’s we ran years ago on the box.

I have run into a corrupt ESXi situation where I had to install ESXi onto a new bootable USB and then boot into that. Best to save your old ESXi boot medium just in case there is something you can recover from it.

The new install should be able to import your VMs from the existing VMFSs and start them.

There is likely someone here that can offer a better restoration but I know that worked for me in the past with minimal reconfiguration.

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That is my next step - thanks!

I have the esxi installer files - how do i create the bootable USB? -
i’ll google it as well just in case you were still here;)

Well - because of your idea we fixed it.

Turns out there were two bootable drives and for some reason it had now started defaulting to the wrong one.

edit: the two bootable drives I’m referring to are an internal SD card and then also a partition on one of the disk arrays. this lack of clarification caused a ‘concern’ in another forum

Ah, nice! Well I dont remember exactly but I think that is what I ended up finding too. I pulled all the usbs, one of which I had plugged in inside the case, and then booted up a new one. After inspecting the removed usbs I realized which one was my current setup and went back to it.

I got SD cards for my R720xd devices and I havent started booting from those but I was considering it.

Made me start want to backup images my ESXi boot device nightly to make restoring it easy, but I havent come up with a good system for it yet.