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(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
[mailto:virt-bounces@lists.fedoraproject.org] On Behalf Of Greg Scott
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 10:09 AM
To: virt(a)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