Irregular Reboot of SBS 2011 VM

[MAIN_CH]

Good Moring Guys,

We have a HP ProLiant ML350 G9 with VMware vSphere 6 Essentials on it.Two VMs are running on this Hosts. Both VMs are converted from a previous Hyper V Host. One VM is a Server 2008 R2 (Ex Hyper V Host) and the other one is a Small Business Server 2011 (Ex Hyper V Guest). The problem now is, that the Small Business Server 2011 VM (SBS) does some randomly restarts without any reasons. In the Eventlog from the VM I can see the Message "Das Gastbetriebssyste dieser VM ist ausgefallen" or in English: The guest OS has stopped working. Then I have to restart the VM and everything runs fine for some hours or even a day. In the VM Log Files i can't find any error messages, it only shows "vmx| I120: GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.".

The other strange thing is, that when I install the VMware tools, the Guest Operationssystem automaticly changes to Windows 7 instead of Server 2008. If i deinstall or deactivate the tools then the VM is correctly regognized as Server 2008. Is this some kind of bug in ESX 6.0? Because we have a similiar environment (SBS 2011) which runs on a esx 5.5, and there is the VM correctly configured as Server 2008 when the VMware Tools are installed....

I'm really puzzled, cause the other Server (Server 2008) which also runs on this Host runs fine without any problems...

I'd be very glad if someone have some inputs for this problem...

The following steps I've already done:

- Reinstall VMware Tools -> The Guest OS changed again to Windows 7

- Deactivate VMware Tools -> The reboots are also happening

- Changed the PowerSaving Options (Windows settings as also VMware settings) to max power, deactivated the power saving options -> no change

Cheers

Claudio

[bradley4681]

What do the windows event logs say around the time of the reboots?

[cykVM]

Just to be clear on that: You converted the former Hyper-V VM (SBS 2011) using the vSphere converter?

It's not recommended to convert a DC holding AD which a SBS usually is. This can and probably will leave a incosistant AD which can lead to unexpected shutdowns/reboots.

Same applies to the Exchange probably running on that SBS.

Also check your Windows eventlogs for any trace of a bluescreen.

How often do the reboots appear?

[MAIN_CH]

Thank you all for your replies, but finally I found the issue...

In the eventlog I found nothing about problems, except the reboot itself of course.

So I checked the memory dump and I found out that the server had some BSOD with the message about a driver problem. Then I changed the network card form E1000 to vmxnet3 and since then the server runs fine.

Do you have any further informations or links about converting a DC / SBS? In the last years we've converted a few SBS servers which are all running fine, never heard about that. But it would be very interesting to learn more about this!

Cheery & have a nice day

Claudio

[cykVM]

The problems with cloning a DC may arise not right away and lead to a incosistant AD after a certain runtime, the DC might even get tombstoned (which is worst case).

You may read https://www.sole.dk/virtualizing-your-domain-controllers-without-getting-fired/ or this TechNet discussion for example Cloning Domain Controller and Active Directory

and finally this VMWare KB VMware KB: Virtualizing existing domain controllers in VMware vCenter Converter

As said the issues may come to your attention after a certain while and you will probably not think of they are because of the cloning process. If AD starts running mad it might be very hard to recover (without a fresh install from scratch).

Especially with an SBS where Exchange is running on in addition to AD this might get even harder (e.g. Exchnage not able to mount the mailbox database on reboot or even dismounting it during runtime).