Did VMWare Tools break msdb?
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bukkybu
386
Reputation points
Had a VMWare Tools upgrade from 12.5.1.52451 to 12.5.3.52671. The SQL servers were not rebooted after the upgrade was pushed. Weeks later after the SQL servers were rebooted, many of the instances came back up with msdb in a recovery pending state. We recovered the msdb by shutting down the instances and replacing the msdbdata and msdblog files from a good prior backup. We're looking for anyone else who may have experienced this issue or can confirm if VMotion or the VMWare Tools upgrade would cause it.
SQL Server Database Engine
{count} votes
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Erland Sommarskog 124.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator2025-08-21T20:53:04.1+00:00 I find it very difficult to believe that this would be caused by VMWare Tools. As I understand it, VMWare Tools is more for the user experience when working with the VM, so it is nowhere close to affect the disk.
VMotion is another thing, and it is at least a conceivable culprit. (I need to add that I only use VMWare in my home environment, so I've never used VMotion.)
Do I understand this correctly that this happened on multiple VMs?
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bukkybu 386 Reputation points
2025-08-22T21:24:57.3866667+00:00 It did happen on multiple VMs. Some of the affected SQL servers are participants in AGs, and others are standalone. It was a hit and miss on the instances that were impacted. For example, 4 out of 5 instances on an AG primary server were affected. On another AG primary, all of the instances were affected. Same scenario on the standalones. None of the AG secondary servers had the issue. There are multiple hosts and a mix of affected and not affected SQL servers residing on the same host.
Example:
8/2 9:56 am - VMWareTools upgrade (no reboot)
8/16 3:10 am - server reboot
8/16 3:12 am - msdb corruption logged
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Erland Sommarskog 124.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2025-08-22T21:30:07.4366667+00:00 Seems like something happened in conjunction with the reboot - maybe msdb was not shut down in a clean way. It's very hard to say what may have happened from a distance, but, no I can't see that VMWare Tools would be the culprit.
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