Hello all,
It is with great sadness that I'm even posting this question but here's hoping somebody has experienced this pain. As many of us know win2012r2 has ended its life and yet many applications SME's have waited till the bitter end to attempt migration.
We are running vsphere 7.03 backended by Pure flash arrays.
The Win2012r2 vm has evolved (mostly pre-me) to 43 underlying VMDK's of various sizes which are mostly spanned in Windows to several very large volumes (total in use storage is 120T and provisioned is 400T). This server also had a similar activity of moving a spanned volume to it years ago making the disk subsystem even more janky. It is easily one of the top 5 most valuable with the least downtime allowed servers we have. Rubrik backups are a mess because the server is so busy the full Rubrik snaps can kill the server..so we do some by SMB.. point being recovery could be very messy.
Has anybody had luck moving Windows spanned volumes from an older OS to a newer one? Have any reliable references for making it happen?
Appreciate any insight
Fish
Hi Fish,
I had a similar issue once, just not quite this massive of a server.
The steps I performed were just:
If youre able you could dry-run this process with smaller disks in a test scenario, but it should work.
Nonetheless a full backup would definitely be handy...
Lukas,
thanks for the reply. This is going to be fun.. not!
This is a mapping of drives I did using one of LUCD's awesome scripts. Can you say ugly?
| SCSIAddress | vmDiskName | vmDiskSizeGB | windowsDiskIndex | vmDiskUuid | windowsDeviceID |
| SCSI(0:0) | Hard disk 1 | 400 | 0 | 6000C2964aea82ff18071b0ac5546b69 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 |
| SCSI(1:6) | Hard disk 10 | 2048 | 34 | 6000C291c1fbb1050f5f1a5eb77a29bb | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE34 |
| SCSI(1:8) | Hard disk 11 | 2048 | 35 | 6000C29a4cc79d81d470b9886d532181 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE35 |
| SCSI(1:9) | Hard disk 12 | 2048 | 36 | 6000C2944091ecc95846f269dd2c2457 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE36 |
| SCSI(1:10) | Hard disk 13 | 2048 | 37 | 6000C2974fe79aeaa067374a12becce7 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE37 |
| SCSI(1:11) | Hard disk 14 | 1024 | 38 | 6000C2910aa709466f6a7d52dd58d70b | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE38 |
| SCSI(1:12) | Hard disk 15 | 2048 | 39 | 6000C29cd160e93133232d77afe7d976 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE39 |
| SCSI(1:13) | Hard disk 16 | 2048 | 40 | 6000C29118b306ce025a1918afb4a09e | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE40 |
| SCSI(1:14) | Hard disk 17 | 2048 | 41 | 6000C29c76d8f657b3ee683f68b51917 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE41 |
| SCSI(1:15) | Hard disk 18 | 2048 | 42 | 6000C296365dc6ab772871fe344fb9ee | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE42 |
| SCSI(2:0) | Hard disk 19 | 2048 | 5 | 6000C2989e2bb50c40ae2b8ab878810a | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE5 |
| SCSI(0:1) | Hard disk 2 | 300 | 1 | 6000C293293fd0e586e68b0f35536c74 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 |
| SCSI(2:1) | Hard disk 20 | 2048 | 6 | 6000C2984bab312857344c509b1f8fdf | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE6 |
| SCSI(2:2) | Hard disk 21 | 2048 | 7 | 6000C294cf0f4818eddd1c66382041b2 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE7 |
| SCSI(2:3) | Hard disk 22 | 1024 | 8 | 6000C29e7bdc23feef4da1dc94bb8f1f | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE8 |
| SCSI(2:4) | Hard disk 23 | 2048 | 9 | 6000C29a4564825f711efae63988f9ce | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE9 |
| SCSI(2:5) | Hard disk 24 | 2048 | 10 | 6000C29fbdf6defe5791d63a0b39057d | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE10 |
| SCSI(2:6) | Hard disk 25 | 2048 | 11 | 6000C29af0a6567f94c1c4d7917d878f | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE11 |
| SCSI(2:8) | Hard disk 26 | 2048 | 12 | 6000C292ca838d4217c74d6af041d3fb | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE12 |
| SCSI(2:9) | Hard disk 27 | 2048 | 13 | 6000C292ccc24f69b6693b73dfffefb4 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE13 |
| SCSI(2:10) | Hard disk 28 | 2048 | 14 | 6000C2975a827a686368f6d8771e7671 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE14 |
| SCSI(2:11) | Hard disk 29 | 2048 | 15 | 6000C299e217f71a9d68b48a26db0af1 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE15 |
| SCSI(0:2) | Hard disk 3 | 1024 | 2 | 6000C2929a220407bc91a79387b2c57c | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 |
| SCSI(2:12) | Hard disk 30 | 2048 | 16 | 6000C298b22482ebd8bd5e24a697d656 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE16 |
| SCSI(2:13) | Hard disk 31 | 2048 | 17 | 6000C296b0de59919091cad7d7c359ae | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE17 |
| SCSI(2:14) | Hard disk 32 | 2048 | 18 | 6000C29ce04eb8cb8776910c214e5bf6 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE18 |
| SCSI(2:15) | Hard disk 33 | 10240 | 19 | 6000C29a1d39897192c6cc7cdadd06f7 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE19 |
| SCSI(3:0) | Hard disk 34 | 5120 | 20 | 6000C299e7de093a7e85df47260c99bb | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE20 |
| SCSI(3:1) | Hard disk 35 | 5120 | 21 | 6000C2973101ecfa9534c284f7b76bd8 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE21 |
| SCSI(3:2) | Hard disk 36 | 5120 | 22 | 6000C29570436e88985dcaf17ba5ccfd | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE22 |
| SCSI(3:3) | Hard disk 37 | 5120 | 23 | 6000C297145173bab2aa8a780bd99603 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE23 |
| SCSI(3:4) | Hard disk 38 | 12288 | 24 | 6000C29e1b80166fb45bf488dbc7f65f | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE24 |
| SCSI(0:3) | Hard disk 39 | 63488 | 3 | 6000C29c8b3618353ccbf330491e62ca | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3 |
| SCSI(1:0) | Hard disk 4 | 2048 | 28 | 6000C294be38f3f932ca3eeed6143ac2 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE28 |
| SCSI(0:4) | Hard disk 40 | 63488 | 4 | 6000C29554a7052eabbfb591a6a25d78 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4 |
| SCSI(3:5) | Hard disk 41 | 63488 | 25 | 6000C29aa913385c071f28a8840c4c88 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE25 |
| SCSI(3:6) | Hard disk 42 | 63488 | 26 | 6000C29b8a13fb1f775fee4268e3365b | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE26 |
| SCSI(3:8) | Hard disk 43 | 63488 | 27 | 6000C29ede81e942fec57665c31bacae | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE27 |
| SCSI(1:1) | Hard disk 5 | 2048 | 29 | 6000C29fc1355d22327fbf5ff5a92890 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE29 |
| SCSI(1:2) | Hard disk 6 | 2048 | 30 | 6000C2930bd77b0a8f9f4b06667b61eb | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE30 |
| SCSI(1:3) | Hard disk 7 | 2048 | 31 | 6000C29ada1e3f6767d8a14a7f14fbf5 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE31 |
| SCSI(1:4) | Hard disk 8 | 2048 | 32 | 6000C29be70d870c85bbb8c17c5cc0d1 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE32 |
| SCSI(1:5) | Hard disk 9 | 2048 | 33 | 6000C295bc69ea0cbc1cf890b4dae664 | \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE33 |
Just finished a test of a system with 43 disks and the same scsi mappings and windows vols.
Far more simple than I expected considering this is MS tech! Hopefully production will be a similar experience.
To migrate spanned volumes from a Windows Server 2012 R2 to a 2022 server while ensuring optimal performance and balance, employ a systematic approach. Firstly, back up all data on the spanned volumes to mitigate risks. Then, utilize a disk management tool to carefully redistribute the spanned volumes across the new hardware, maintaining a balanced allocation for optimal efficiency. Confirm data integrity post-migration and balance the load across the new server for seamless operation and improved performance.
