VMware Cloud Community
moifmurphy
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 3.5 and USB / Server 2003 fail

Hi,

We're having some issues with one of our 2003 virtuals. On Monday morning it was reported that the virtual had stopped and was stuck in a BSOD loop. After some investigation and much debugging of memory dump files we narrowed it down to a dodgy sys file that may have been updated automatically over the weekend. Anyway, we removed the offending software where things got worse.

To cut a long story short we have a virtual that won't boot into anything other than safe mode. We've had to remove all the networking including the virtual adapters just to be able to get access. We can see our data, we just can't get to it. Luckily I made virtual backup in July and we run tape backups during the week so we can get ourselves back to a happy place.

My questions are:

1. Is there any software based solution that will enable us to plug in a USB device so we can detach and move our SQL databases?

2. Is there anything else we can do to get that data off the virtual? Any hacks or lesser known tricks. Perhaps there's a log file I may have missed on the ESXi server.

3. Seeing as we have a previous version of the server running, am I able to add the drives from the broken virtual into our running virtual and read the data? Much like slaving a broken physical hdd?

And as much as I hate to ask here, does MS Virtual Server support USB? I'm thinking as a last resort I can install that, import the vmware file and at least get USB working.

Thanks

Reply
0 Kudos
2 Replies
AntonVZhbankov
Immortal
Immortal

Why can't you just create another 2003 VM, connect vmdks from failed VMs and import data? Why USB?


---

MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

EMCCAe, HPE ASE, MCITP: SA+VA, VCP 3/4/5, VMware vExpert XO (14 stars)
VMUG Russia Leader
http://t.me/beerpanda
Reply
0 Kudos
moifmurphy
Contributor
Contributor

That's the route I'm planning to take. The topic of USB came up as my boss seems to think an external USB drive is the answer to everything Smiley Happy

I was just wondering if there was a different undocumented route out there I hadn't yet discovered.

Anyway, I'm running on 4 hours sleep, egg and sausage sandwiches, hope and a little bit of luck.

See you on the other side...

Reply
0 Kudos