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vmrulz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Moving spanned volumes on massive windows 2012r2 to win 2022 server

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

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lukasrueckerl
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Fish,

I had a similar issue once, just not quite this massive of a server.

The steps I performed were just:

  • Kill all operations on the volume and unmount the volume via removing the drive letter
  • Set all disks offline in disk manager on source 
  • Create new SCSI Controller on new VM
  • Detach VMDKs from source
  • Re-attach VMDKs in exact same order with same LUN IDs on the new system
  • Bring disks online on new system
  • You should be able to right-click the first volume and select "Import foreign Disk"
  • Done

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... 

 

Regards,
Lukas

-------------------------------------------
VCIX-NV + VCIX-DCV 2023
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vmrulz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Lukas,

thanks for the reply. This is going to be fun.. not!

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vmrulz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

This is a mapping of drives I did using one of LUCD's awesome scripts. Can you say ugly?

 

SCSIAddressvmDiskNamevmDiskSizeGBwindowsDiskIndexvmDiskUuidwindowsDeviceID
SCSI(0:0)Hard disk 140006000C2964aea82ff18071b0ac5546b69\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0
SCSI(1:6)Hard disk 102048346000C291c1fbb1050f5f1a5eb77a29bb\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE34
SCSI(1:8)Hard disk 112048356000C29a4cc79d81d470b9886d532181\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE35
SCSI(1:9)Hard disk 122048366000C2944091ecc95846f269dd2c2457\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE36
SCSI(1:10)Hard disk 132048376000C2974fe79aeaa067374a12becce7\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE37
SCSI(1:11)Hard disk 141024386000C2910aa709466f6a7d52dd58d70b\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE38
SCSI(1:12)Hard disk 152048396000C29cd160e93133232d77afe7d976\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE39
SCSI(1:13)Hard disk 162048406000C29118b306ce025a1918afb4a09e\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE40
SCSI(1:14)Hard disk 172048416000C29c76d8f657b3ee683f68b51917\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE41
SCSI(1:15)Hard disk 182048426000C296365dc6ab772871fe344fb9ee\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE42
SCSI(2:0)Hard disk 19204856000C2989e2bb50c40ae2b8ab878810a\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE5
SCSI(0:1)Hard disk 230016000C293293fd0e586e68b0f35536c74\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1
SCSI(2:1)Hard disk 20204866000C2984bab312857344c509b1f8fdf\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE6
SCSI(2:2)Hard disk 21204876000C294cf0f4818eddd1c66382041b2\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE7
SCSI(2:3)Hard disk 22102486000C29e7bdc23feef4da1dc94bb8f1f\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE8
SCSI(2:4)Hard disk 23204896000C29a4564825f711efae63988f9ce\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE9
SCSI(2:5)Hard disk 242048106000C29fbdf6defe5791d63a0b39057d\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE10
SCSI(2:6)Hard disk 252048116000C29af0a6567f94c1c4d7917d878f\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE11
SCSI(2:8)Hard disk 262048126000C292ca838d4217c74d6af041d3fb\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE12
SCSI(2:9)Hard disk 272048136000C292ccc24f69b6693b73dfffefb4\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE13
SCSI(2:10)Hard disk 282048146000C2975a827a686368f6d8771e7671\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE14
SCSI(2:11)Hard disk 292048156000C299e217f71a9d68b48a26db0af1\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE15
SCSI(0:2)Hard disk 3102426000C2929a220407bc91a79387b2c57c\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
SCSI(2:12)Hard disk 302048166000C298b22482ebd8bd5e24a697d656\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE16
SCSI(2:13)Hard disk 312048176000C296b0de59919091cad7d7c359ae\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE17
SCSI(2:14)Hard disk 322048186000C29ce04eb8cb8776910c214e5bf6\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE18
SCSI(2:15)Hard disk 3310240196000C29a1d39897192c6cc7cdadd06f7\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE19
SCSI(3:0)Hard disk 345120206000C299e7de093a7e85df47260c99bb\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE20
SCSI(3:1)Hard disk 355120216000C2973101ecfa9534c284f7b76bd8\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE21
SCSI(3:2)Hard disk 365120226000C29570436e88985dcaf17ba5ccfd\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE22
SCSI(3:3)Hard disk 375120236000C297145173bab2aa8a780bd99603\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE23
SCSI(3:4)Hard disk 3812288246000C29e1b80166fb45bf488dbc7f65f\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE24
SCSI(0:3)Hard disk 396348836000C29c8b3618353ccbf330491e62ca\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3
SCSI(1:0)Hard disk 42048286000C294be38f3f932ca3eeed6143ac2\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE28
SCSI(0:4)Hard disk 406348846000C29554a7052eabbfb591a6a25d78\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4
SCSI(3:5)Hard disk 4163488256000C29aa913385c071f28a8840c4c88\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE25
SCSI(3:6)Hard disk 4263488266000C29b8a13fb1f775fee4268e3365b\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE26
SCSI(3:8)Hard disk 4363488276000C29ede81e942fec57665c31bacae\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE27
SCSI(1:1)Hard disk 52048296000C29fc1355d22327fbf5ff5a92890\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE29
SCSI(1:2)Hard disk 62048306000C2930bd77b0a8f9f4b06667b61eb\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE30
SCSI(1:3)Hard disk 72048316000C29ada1e3f6767d8a14a7f14fbf5\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE31
SCSI(1:4)Hard disk 82048326000C29be70d870c85bbb8c17c5cc0d1\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE32
SCSI(1:5)Hard disk 92048336000C295bc69ea0cbc1cf890b4dae664\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE33
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vmrulz
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Just finished a test of a system with 43 disks and the same scsi mappings and windows vols. 

  • Shutdown both servers (did not do anything to the source server in terms of offlining disks etc)
  • Remove all disks (except C: and E:) from source in vCenter
  • Assigned disks to new server in the same sequence including SCSI mappings (this was VERY tedious with 43 disks in the UI.. If I did this more I'd powercli it).
  • Powered on new server
  • Onlined all disks
  • Imported foriegn disks (just right click on 1st disk and choose import foriegn disks and this will import all disks and volumes at once)
  • The import checks the health of the disk/vol which is nice before you click OK.

Far more simple than I expected considering this is MS tech! Hopefully production will be a similar experience.

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Sajjad231
Contributor
Contributor

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.

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