[TriLUG] question about data security with vmdks

[Matt Pusateri]

On Apr 14, 2011, at 2:19 PM, Warren Myers wrote:

> I asked this on ServerFault as well, but wanted to get an additional
> audience:
> 
> If I want to mitigate the risk of data recovery from a disk drive resold as
> surplus equipment, how would the use of virtual disks assist?
> 
> For example, if I have half a dozen vmdks on a 1TB drive (for sake of
> argument, presume they've been added to different VMs), and I decide to
> decommission the drive, would simply erasing the vmdks and then selling /
> repurposing the drive ensure that the underlying data had been well-erased -
> even without extensive overwriting (for example, a quick format back to a
> blank drive)?
> 


It seems what you are asking: Is it possible to undelete/recover files from a vmfs formatted disk.  In VMware 3.5 there was a vmfs-undelete that would allow you to undelete vmdk's that had been deleted off the disk.  I heard it got removed in 4.x, and don't see it on my 4.1 box, but we may not have all the SDK's on that box.

I would say running something like DBAN on the drive would be prudent before letting it go out the door.


Matt P.