[fedora-virt] Restored Windows Server 2003 VM goes black

[Greg Scott]

Hisao Taguchi may have found a great idea.  Hisao pointed to this
article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082

 

It describes a process to proactively load a different IDE driver to a
Windows XP system before moving it to different hardware.   This
absolutely parallels the problem I need to solve - and I gotta believe I
am not alone.  I want to P2V a Windows 2003 Server with an uncooperative
system disk driver.   I've tried virt-p2v, the old-fashioned ntbackup
and restore, and an Acronis trial download.  So far, nothing works - and
the whole challenge comes back to that virtio disk driver not being
present in the source physical machine.  

 

If we could come up with a way to proactively install that virtio driver
into a physical Windows Server host before P2Ving it, maybe we could
solve P2V problems worldwide and it would be a huge step forward.  

 

-          Greg Scott

 

 

From: virt-bounces at lists.fedoraproject.org
[mailto:virt-bounces at lists.fedoraproject.org] On Behalf Of Greg Scott
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 10:09 AM
To: virt at lists.fedoraproject.org
Subject: [fedora-virt] Restored Windows Server 2003 VM goes black

 

I tried a P2V migration last week and here might be a better spot to
document the results.  I have an aging physical host running Windows
2003 Server and I want to P2V that host in to a libvirt VM.  The
physical host uses a Compaq Smart Array 532 Controller with a Compaq
Logical Volume SCSI disk device.  The logical volume is a RAID 5 set.  

 

I first tried using the new virt-p2v approach, but haven't been
successful.  So I tried doing it the old-fashioned way.  On a RHEL 6.1
host, I built a libvirt Windows 2003 VM from scratch using a virtio
system drive.  Then, on the physical host, I ran ntbackup and backed up
all the system drive files to a network share viewable from my newly
provisioned VM.  I also backed up the system state.  From the 2003 VM, I
restored the system drive files and system state and rebooted.  

 

When rebooting, the VM flashes a couple of POST SeaBIOS lines, then the
console window goes black.  No BSOD, just black.  Virt-manager shows the
VM is still powered on, but the console window just sits there, black,
until I force the VM to power off.  I tried pressing F8 to see if I
could get to a Windows boot menu, but this never worked.  I have a hunch
something is going on with the new system virtual drive and the driver
for the old system drive.  

 

I can boot the VM from a virtual CD and launch the Windows recovery
console, and from there I can see the Windows installation.  The login
uses the new password, so I think the ntbackup - restores did their
jobs.  I tried a fixboot and fixmbr, but neither of these did any good.
I tried another ntbackup - restore, this time using an IDE system drive
in my VM (the restore took 50 percent more time than with virtio), but
this also made no difference.  

 

I ended up re-enabling the NIC on the physical host again and now I'm
trying to come up with a plan C. Are there any other ideas I'm not
thinking of?

 

Thanks

 

-    Greg Scott

 

 

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