Above all, treat metadata as a critical asset. Back up the first 100 MB of every VMFS volume, maintain current VM backups, and follow storage best practices. In the event of corruption, remain calm: the data is almost always still there, waiting for the right tool to reconstruct the pointers that lead to it.
The following tools are standard for diagnosing and repairing VMFS structures: Broadcom support portalhttps://knowledge.broadcom.com Corruption seen on VMFS datastore due to overwritten data recover vmfs metadata
Due to complexity, this is rarely practical unless you are a reverse-engineering expert. Above all, treat metadata as a critical asset
Outcome in this example: 8 VMs fully recovered, 2 from backup. maintain current VM backups