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10 Replies Last post: Jan 30, 2008 3:29 AM by t35216

W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server posted: Jan 29, 2008 7:49 AM

markbn2

4 posts since
Jan 29, 2008

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

We have a VMWare ESX environment that we are using for Disaster Recovery Testing. We are trying to restore a backup from a HP DL350 physical server to a VM. After restoring our backup from tape and restarting the server we get a blue screen of death 0x0000007B - which (I think) equates to Inaccesible Boot Device.

More Details...

We have a HP DL380 running Windows Server 2003 SP2 which we are backing up to tape.
We have installed a new Windows 2003 Guest OS in to a VM (also SP2)
Installed our backup client on the server and restored the C drive & system state
On restarting the server a blue screen of death appears 0x0000007B

Othe Info

We have attempted a Repair of the O/S and despite the repair appearing succesful when it restarts the same blue screen of death is shown!
The HAL on the source machine is a ACPI MultiProcess and on the target VM its ACPI Uniprocessor which I believe is compatibile as per M/S KB 249694
Have re-installed the SCSI controller before rebooting the machine in Device Manager i.e. Right click > Update driver etc etc.

Any ideas would be greatly recieved!

Many Thanks

Mark Holland

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

1. Jan 29, 2008 8:06 AM

in response to: markbn2

wila

3,372 posts since
Jun 27, 2006

The 7B error is indeed a problem when trying to access the boot device, are you using LSI logic for your virtual disks?

An alternative approach is to use the free vmware convertor instead of a rebuild from tape.
--
Wil

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

2. Jan 29, 2008 8:24 AM

in response to: markbn2

tom howarth

7,394 posts since
Jul 25, 2005

you have not replaced the boot device driver, this is the reason for the 7B stop error. a repair will be sucessfull because there is nothing wrong with the machine.

Tom Howarth
VMware Communities User Moderator

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

3. Jan 29, 2008 8:38 AM

in response to: tom howarth

markbn2

4 posts since
Jan 29, 2008

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your response.

Before I restored the tape in to the DR environment I checked the "SCSI and RAID Controllers". Under Device Manager I noted the working VM had a "LSI Logic" controller specfied.

After the Restore operation I right clicked on the "LSI Logic" controller and selected update driver. I then manually pointed it to the file location which I had noted down from the previously working VM.

Is this what you mean or if not could you please give me some more help on how to replace the boot driver?

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

4. Jan 29, 2008 8:41 AM

in response to: wila

markbn2

4 posts since
Jan 29, 2008

Yes we are using LSI Logic for the VMWare environment - I verified this BEFORE we did the tape restore. I also "Updated" the driver on this after the tape restore and before rebooting the machine.

Yes VMWARE Convertor would get my server up and running but the purpose of the tests is to document procedures in the event of a disaster. In other words we would not be able to run the VMWARE Convertor on the server as it would be non operational...

Any further suggestions?

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

5. Jan 29, 2008 9:12 AM

in response to: markbn2

wila

3,372 posts since
Jun 27, 2006

If you have an enterprise license for your VI environment then you probably also have access to the vmware convertor standalone version which boots from a WinPE image. In that case your machine only needs to be able to boot. Not something that is 100% sure on a dead machine, but usually you can move disks.

Anyways that is one approach. Personally i would virtualize the server before using the tape backup as a DR test. Getting a real VM back up running from a backup works in a jiffy. What you are doing now is DR troubleshooting while the problem might be different when the real trouble occurs. I understand that this is exactly what you are trying to isolate, but your physical machine might look different at the DR time.

--
Wil

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

6. Jan 29, 2008 11:06 AM

in response to: wila

markbn2

4 posts since
Jan 29, 2008

thanks your suggestions but we are writing procedures for what happens if we loose all our servers / computer room / office etc. Basically we cannot have the assumption to boot the old server from pe etc.

Also we're after a solution which we can test out on numbers of servers. My question should be - how do I sucessfully boot up a restored backup from a physical server to a vm assuming there is no access to the original machine......

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

7. Jan 29, 2008 1:11 PM

in response to: markbn2

aguacero

176 posts since
Jan 25, 2008

We are evaluating DR tools and one of them to be leading candidate of ours is the Acronis True Image which allows for "bare metal recovery". You can backup your physical machine and later restore it to a VM. Something to definitely look at in my opinion.

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

8. Jan 30, 2008 1:09 AM

in response to: markbn2

wila

3,372 posts since
Jun 27, 2006

It is possible as i've done that many times myself, even when doing it the way you describe. The easiest way is like i say, using the vmware converter.
Alternative products are available from Platespin, Vizioncore and as suggested Altiris. I'm sure there's more.

Without additional tools it can be done too. Preferably with windows machines that have a VLK license form and not an OEM/Standard one as those need to be activated again. Let alone the legal aspect on virtualizing an OEM version, but that's your choice.

I'm not sure why you are see-ing your issue right now, except that it appears that your installed LSI driver isn't working for the virtual disk.
Did you install the LSI driver beforehand just to make sure you could virtualize the VM? (Done that myself and it actually worked for me)
If so, where did you get the driver from?

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

9. Jan 30, 2008 2:12 AM

in response to: markbn2

AWo

4,162 posts since
Nov 27, 2003

Try Cristie CBMR (http://www.cristie.com). They offer a DR tool with dissimilar hardware support for many years, now. You can use it (same look and feel) for Windows, Linux, HPUX and Solaris. A central management console is available.

We made a very good experience with this tool as a P2P, P2V and V2P. You can choose to what hardware you restore at restore time. In case of Windows, you can choose which device you want to exchange in the HAL via CBMR (you need the .inf file and the driver to do this). If you restore to a different (virtual) hardware you must exchange the disk adapter driver, otherwise you'll end up with this 7B.

AWo

Re: W2K3 Blue Screen of Death when attempting DR tests from Physical to Virtual Server

10. Jan 30, 2008 3:29 AM

in response to: AWo

t35216

9 posts since
Sep 11, 2007

Hi,

We have implemented our DR environment with the backbone being Backup Exec and Backupexec System Recovery, basically scheduled nightly images of our system drives written to data drives or central share and backed up to disk/tape as required.

Recovery is quick and possible to anywhere physical/virtual. Recover system drive and then restore data, I have used on hardware from all vendors successfully to both physical and virtual platforms.

Regards,

Peter

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