Migrating 2008R2

[danboid]

Hi PVE users and devs!

I installed PVE 2.1 this morning and I'm impressed so far but I have a few questions before I'll be up and running properly:

First, I've read that using raw VM disk images are slightly faster than qcow2 but what is the optimal cache setting for best disk IO performance - the default (non)? I realise I'll also need to install Fedora's PV drivers to get the best performance but that's something I'll be doing when I get it to boot without a bsod!

I need a working, reliable method of migrating 2008 installs P2V and I've had no luck so far and 2008 isn't covered here:

http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE

I used the latest fsarchiver (on sysresccd 2.8.0) to create an image of my physical 2008R2 install. I read somewhere on this forum that running mergeide isn't required under 2008R2 and Windows 7 so I didn't bother with that.

On the above link, that user gets the following output:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fsarchiver probe simple
[======DISK======] [=============NAME==============] [====SIZE====] [MAJ] [MIN]
[vda ] [RED HAT VIRTIO SCSI DEVICE ] [ 15.00 GB] [ 8] [ 0]


But when I ran the same command under SRCD on my to-be 2008R2 guest I see sda (instead of vda) and a QEMU device - is this because Ubuntu includes Linux virtio drivers whilst SRCD 2.8.0 doesn't? Surely I don't need virtio drivers in a guest os like SRCD just to copy an image into place? Regardless, I managed to restore my image with SRCD/fsarchiver without any errors then I did a:

ms-sys -7 /dev/sda

To write a Win7 MBR to sda - W7 and 2008 use the same MBR loader right? That did get by image partly booting but it doesn't even get as far as showing the Windows logo as I get the error:

0xc000000e - The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible

I've tried using the repair tools on 2008 install DVD with no success so I'm all out of ideas now. I realise a fresh install of 2008 may work but as I say, I need a working a reliable method of migrating 2008 P2V.

When we get this working I'll update the above linked page with instructions for 2008 (and Win7)?

Thanks for your help!

Dan

 

[danboid]

I should note a couple of things:

1 - I've never tried imaging 2008 before so I'm unsure if my technique would've worked on a physical machine. I have however successfully imaged Win7 from one physical machine to another with this technique but in order for w7 to boot correctly I had to run the repair tool off the Windows install DVD. This method only works with W7 if you manually install it to a single NTFS partition and this is how I installed 2008 so I expected it would work for 2008 too.

2 - I have heard Clonezilla works better for cloning Windows 7 so maybe a CZ image would've worked but my 2008 partition was much bigger than the virtualized one so instead of shrinking that down then imaging (with CZ or dd) I decided just to use fsarchiver, which I prefer anyway for a few reasons (ease of use, supported filesystems and features etc.)

 

[danboid]

After some more searching, I came across this page on cloning 2008:

http://www.rayheffer.com/619/cloning-windows-server-2008-r2-use-sysprep-no-more-newsid/

Basically, the author advises the following steps be took to image/virtualize 2008:

1) Run Sysprep (on Windows Server 2008 this is located in c:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Sysprep.exe)
2) Ensure ‘System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)’ is selected
3) Tick the ‘Generalize’ option (this resets the SID)
4) Select ‘Shutdown’ from the Shutdown Options.
5) Once the machine has shutdown, take your image and you are good to go!

I hoping someone will have a quick fix for my seemingly broken 2008 image as otherwise I'll have to start from scratch building my server.

Does 2008 create a hidden boot partition at install time by default like Windows 7 does? As I mentioned before, if it does do this I think I avoided that issue as I already had a blank NTFS partition in place when I installed 2008 so it all got installed in the one partition.

I know about vmware creator and selfimage but I'd think that these two options should only be used as a last resort right? I mean, do they intelligently update your image if any files change during the imaging process? Of course, creating an image offline (ie with fsarchiver or clonezilla) avoids these potential probs and I don't think these tools are an option for 2008 if I have to use sysprep as sysprep shuts your machine down before you can take the image.

 

[danboid]

Yesterday I successfully imaged a physical 2008 install and got it booting under PVE but I had to use sysprep to get it to work. A friend of mine swears he has successfully imaged windows 7 from one machine to another using just clonezilla but I tried doing the same with 2008 yesterday with no luck.

Using sysprep would be fine if it didn't also have the effect of removing all your settings from all apps so is there a reliable way to transfer 2008R2 from one machine to another without having to sacrifice (or try to backup and restore separetely) all your documents and settings? Maybe this is possible with the vmware converter? I presume that when you use the vmware converter you have to stop all network services except those required by the converter?

I'd love to hear of any success stories or otherwise in doing a 2008 P2V please!

 

[udo]

Yesterday I successfully imaged a physical 2008 install and got it booting under PVE but I had to use sysprep to get it to work. A friend of mine swears he has successfully imaged windows 7 from one machine to another using just clonezilla but I tried doing the same with 2008 yesterday with no luck.

Using sysprep would be fine if it didn't also have the effect of removing all your settings from all apps so is there a reliable way to transfer 2008R2 from one machine to another without having to sacrifice (or try to backup and restore separetely) all your documents and settings? Maybe this is possible with the vmware converter? I presume that when you use the vmware converter you have to stop all network services except those required by the converter?

I'd love to hear of any success stories or otherwise in doing a 2008 P2V please!

Hi,
I think it's depends on your hardware of the physical win2008. Have you tried with simple IDE as disk (and before mergeid)?
I never transfer win2008 hosts (all installed directly on pve) only win2003/XP - but with most of them i don't had (much) trouble. But some machines don't work after transfer... windows...

Udo

 

[acidrop]

I have managed to successfully P2V Win2k8 and Win7 to PVE 2.1 by using vmware converter to create a vmdk file and then by:

dd if=/mnt/pve/nfs_backup/win2k8.vmdk of=/dev/drbdvg0/vm-101-disk-1
(just an example with a drbd volume group.Use your target..)

This is described here.

MergeIDE is NOT needed on Win7/2k8...instead of that you can try this procedure and see if it works.