Backup exec of VM's, on restore presented with win32k.sys unpaged BSOD

[swisst]

guys,

have a load of VMs hosted on a ESX 3.5 cluster these VMs' are pretty static (as in non changing and definately no user data) Windows 2003 Std Terminal Server boxes which for ease and timescales, I have installed normal windows backup exec remote agents and run a monthly backup. These seem to backup succesfully.

During a semi DR exercise I tried to instigate a restore of one of my guest instances and the thing gets hung up just after windows starts loading with a nonpaged / paged address fault this highlighted the win32k.sys as the cause.

Have read that Win32k.sys bsods are usually related to 3rd party (non Microsoft) driver problems.

But no one else "seems" to have had this problem which draws me to conclude that either I am doing something not quite right or i am a trail blazer...probably the former.

So the questions are;

1. is backing up a windows instance using the backup exec remote agent a valid backup solution.

and

2. if so what could be causing the win32k.sys bsod and how do I get around this.

thanks

[bobross]

Backup of system images is a dicey thing at best. I must ask you why you aren't using Vmotion to protect these systems, instead of backup and restore? Vmotion is a much simpler D/R method these days. We don't backup system images anymore; the data, sure, but not the system images themselves.

[swisst]

bobros, thanks for time in looking at the thread but I think you missed the point of my post.

I am not backing user data up at all (because there isn't any), just the server instances themselves.

the virtual instance which I am working on here had suffered from a windows file corruption, I don't see how Vmotion would have protected me against this ?

I do have vMotion running but that only allows protection against ESX physical hardware problems....

[bobross]

No problem. I realize you aren't backing up user data. But backup of a system image is not useful...compared to keeping a 'clean' copy of the system image, or in this case a sysprep image, which can be brought to life very quickly, probably much faster than doing a restore. I protect my VM system images by keeping a 'gold' copy on SAN and merely cloning it when I need a new one. Keeping a gold copy, you can clone it, bring it up and Vmotion it to wherever you need.