P2V Windows 2008 R2
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I found that Citrix did have a P2V convertor solution, but it became unsupported as of version 6.5 (last supported in 6.2).
I also found that there is apparently a new version, but it's a licensed product from Citrix.
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I'm guessing that I have a storage controller issue. i.e. I was using a p400 RAID card in my physical server, and now XS is presenting SATA drives and Windows just isn't happy with that. There is a boot driver (I'm guessing) that's demanding to load and when it doesn't see the hardware, it fails.
I found a MS page that talked about the needed registry entries and files when converting from physical to Hyper-V, I know I'm going to XS, but I made sure I had them, and I do.
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@Dashrender said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
I'm guessing that I have a storage controller issue. i.e. I was using a p400 RAID card in my physical server, and now XS is presenting SATA drives and Windows just isn't happy with that. There is a boot driver (I'm guessing) that's demanding to load and when it doesn't see the hardware, it fails.
I found a MS page that talked about the needed registry entries and files when converting from physical to Hyper-V, I know I'm going to XS, but I made sure I had them, and I do.
Does the VM boot if you try to start it in safe mode?
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@dafyre said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
Does the VM boot if you try to start it in safe mode?
No, same BSOD.
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The xenconvert utility went unsupported asfter XS 6.2 i think. I have used it with 6.5 successfully.
I do not know about 7.
If you are getting the 0x7b error(inaccessible boot device), i have found this can(usually) be fixed by- Doing the Startup repair option for the converted vm, as long as windows can see the partition.
You could possibly also get this done by exporting as an ova file to an external drive then importing. Though you say you dont have room for this. This sometimes fixes the problem.
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@Dashrender
Yes you are right it is because of your hdd setup in xs vs the hw raid. You may also be able to do this:- Uninstall storage devices/drivers from device manager on the physical box
- Use Xenconvert or export
- Success!?
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Another suggestion, if that XS7 box you have is unused, you can put 6.5(6.5 still gets regular updates, last one 2 weeks ago) or even 6.2 on it, just make the partitions the correct size for XS7. Then use the xenconvert utility. Then when the vms are usable, upgrade to XS7.
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The issue with this is the same issue as was discussed yesterday. The underlying storage that the VM is looking for is the RAID array. That is why the devices have the cciss.
If you can convert the disk to a NTFS disk for example, then you'd have no issues booting the VM.
How you can do this inside of XenServer... change the underlying hardware (when the server its self sees is asking for the wrong hardware)
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@momurda said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
Another suggestion, if that XS7 box you have is unused, you can put 6.5(6.5 still gets regular updates, last one 2 weeks ago) or even 6.2 on it, just make the partitions the correct size for XS7. Then use the xenconvert utility. Then when the vms are usable, upgrade to XS7.
This assumes that the VMs will just work after the xenconvert. Which I saw at least one report today that said you are just as likely to need to fix the boot device after using XenConvert as you would any other migration method, which is why I am looking to fix this without changing my version of XenServer or playing the physical to ESXi/Hyper-V to XS game.
But I might not have any choice soon.
I'm trying to fix this as much for my own education as for being stubborn at this point.
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@Dashrender said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
@momurda said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
Another suggestion, if that XS7 box you have is unused, you can put 6.5(6.5 still gets regular updates, last one 2 weeks ago) or even 6.2 on it, just make the partitions the correct size for XS7. Then use the xenconvert utility. Then when the vms are usable, upgrade to XS7.
This assumes that the VMs will just work after the xenconvert. Which I saw at least one report today that said you are just as likely to need to fix the boot device after using XenConvert as you would any other migration method, which is why I am looking to fix this without changing my version of XenServer or playing the physical to ESXi/Hyper-V to XS game.
But I might not have any choice soon.
I'm trying to fix this as much for my own education as for being stubborn at this point.
How about a repair install? Would that bork all your programs and settings?
I've done this successfully on a couple of machines.
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@DustinB3403 said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
The issue with this is the same issue as was discussed yesterday. The underlying storage that the VM is looking for is the RAID array. That is why the devices have the cciss.
If you can convert the disk to a NTFS disk for example, then you'd have no issues booting the VM.
What? I already have a VM with VDI attached, and I can attach these VDIs to another VM and access the boot partition and the data partitions with no issues - and those are all NTFS inside the VDI, so I have no idea what you're talking about.
How you can do this inside of XenServer... change the underlying hardware (when the server its self sees is asking for the wrong hardware)
I see two possible solutions to my problem
- from within the VM change the boot device from what it expects (the HP P400 RAID controller) to a SATA controller
- from within the XS VM properties - make the VM think it has a RAID controller/SAS disk, not SATA to boot from. I know ESXi can do this, basically lie to the VM and claim that the storage controller is an LSI RAID controller, I don't know how to do this in XS.
I know that option 1 is the typical way this is solved - but I can't figure out how or what to change either in the registry or filewise inside the VM to make it skip knowing/caring about the RAID controller it once knew about.
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@dafyre said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
How about a repair install? Would that bork all your programs and settings?
As in install over the top? I really don't want to do that either. I'd try xenconvert before I'd do that.
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Why can't you create a new VM and import the data from the array over to it?
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@DustinB3403 said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
Why can't you create a new VM and import the data from the array over to it?
Because they are application servers - ones I don't have settings for.
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Or an alternative option would be to create a new VM and attach the disks that contain the storage to it from there.
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So the C drive contains the applications that they host.
hrm...
I'd try a different conversion tool,
which tool did you use to create this VM?you said you used clonezilla to create a VM of these.Try a different tool. Like Vmwares Standalone Converter. You install it on your system, target the IP of the remote physical, and convert it. Giving it a storage target.
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I am telling you what has worked in my experience. Last year I converted 20 something vms doing what i suggested with xenconvert on xs 6.5. Most of these were on HW raid and i successfully converted every single one, form win2k up to server 2012.
Honestly just try using the tool with xs7 it probably just works. and the servers can still be used while the conversion is happening. -
@DustinB3403 said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
So the C drive contains the applications that they host.
hrm...
I'd try a different conversion tool, which tool did you use to create this VM?
@Dashrender said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
I use Clonezilla and after going through several versions I find a version ...
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@DustinB3403 said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
Try a different tool. Like Vmwares Standalone Converter. You install it on your system, target the IP of the remote physical, and convert it. Giving it a storage target.
That will export into XS? As I mentioned in my OP, I don't have space on my ESXi host for this, so i can't import it there.
Plus I already said I wanted to avoid the convert/convert game.
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@Dashrender said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
@DustinB3403 said in P2V Windows 2008 R2:
Try a different tool. Like Vmwares Standalone Converter. You install it on your system, target the IP of the remote physical, and convert it. Giving it a storage target.
That will export into XS? As I mentioned in my OP, I don't have space on my ESXi host for this, so i can't import it there.
Plus I already said I wanted to avoid the convert/convert game.
With the converter you just export it to a VHD file. The VHD file can be imported into XenServer using XenCenter (XO doesn't support VHD)
