Strange behaviour of Server 2012R2 VM (no pagefile.sys) after copying with help from an NFS Datastore

[bitarbyter]

Hello there,

I´m copying various VMs from an old to an new cluster. I do it a really basical way (we have only 8 VMs to migrate): I copy them from the first cluster datastore (SAS Storage) to an Synology NAS with NFS (BTFRs+) and from there I copy it to the new Cluster Datastore (also a SAS Storage). I know they are transformed to Thin, whilst doing this. The first lessen I´ve learned. So for an example I copy the servername.vmdk (THICK) onto the NFS it´s an servername-flat.vmdk and an servername.vmdk (THIN of course). After copying back from the NFS to the new Cluster, it´s an servername.vmdk again, but THIN. Well I can live with this behaviour. And I already transformed a lot of VMs in the past this way. But with one VM I do really have strange problem now. Thankfully it will be replaced at the moment (it´s an RDS Server), but I would like to understand what happened. After copying this VM (again Windows Server 2012R2) and after sizing the RAM (from 32GB to 64GB) and the Disk (from 500GB to 800GB) my pagefile.sys was gone. It´s not on C and after one of the reboots (I belive after installing the VMWare Tools) a windows appeared where I should set my Virtual Memory. But when you set it and reboot (even if you open this windows again) the setting is gone. So the server is running now without a pagefile.sys. I searched all over the web, but I didn´t found something like this. Anyone of you had recently such kind of problem? The server itself is working fine, every tool is  up an running. There are 20 users working on it. The new one is up and running again, so it´s not really important, but I´m really interested in it.

The old system was vSphere ESXi 6 (U3)
The new system is vSphere ESXi 7 (Dell optimized A02)
Datastore old: VMFS6

Datastore new: VMFS6
NFS: BTRFS (Synology)

Thanks in advance,
Stefan

[scott28tt]

Restoring the desired Windows pagefile configuration would be a Microsoft-specific process.

[bitarbyter]

First, thank you for your answer. But why restore? I just migrated a VM over Datastores and the VM is loosing some ability. I thought it may have to do without reseting the zeroes ( I don´t know if VMware does this by copying a thick file onto an NFS storage). My point ist, this has maybe something to do with my work in VMWare, not inside Windows.

[scott28tt]

I said "restoring the pagefile configuration", not anything about restoring the file from a backup - more about resetting/fixing your pagefile settings.

I cannot see how what you have done to the underlying VMDK files would have altered the Windows pagefile configuration.

[bitarbyter]

Ok, maybe it´s not for this forum. As I said I have tried to "restore" the pagefile.sys. But the VM won´t do it. After a restart the setting is gone again. And I found nothing, and I mean nothing in the wide web out there (except some Windows 7 installations suffered from this due to a wrong audio driver). I had the hope, someone else run in this issue. So you believe it has nothing to do with thick->thin conversion due to copying? This would help me a lot. Thanks.

[bitarbyter]

Ok, I found the cause. It´s not really the pagefile.sys. The MFT and filesystems are damaged and due to this he wasn´t able to set a pagefile.sys. So, know for future migrations: Do you think this could happen from copying such a VM as tick over a NFS to another Datatstore where it ends as a Thin Disk?! Thanks in advance.