OK, it can be done. So your lost host/pool had some fancy named network device (let's say idrac). You don't have identical hardware. Solution:
set up a virtualized XCP-NG with the same (more might work) number of NICs as your lost host access that host's console xe pif-list # find a NIC you don't need for metadata restore, let's say eth4 xe pif-forget uuid=<that pif> xe network-list # find the network associated with the forgotten NIC xe network-destroy uuid=<that network> ip link set dev eth4 down ip link set dev eth4 name idrac ip link set dev idrac up ip link show # find idrac's mac xe pif-introduce host-uuid<your virtualized host> mac=<idrac's mac> device=idrac I think this automatically added a network named idrac to the pool - don't know if it's neededNow you can add the virtualized host to XO and restore your metadata. Is this a good idea? I don't know. I did not test it any further.