Server 2012R2 from Xen

[SilkBC]

Hello,

We did a Veeam baremetal restore of a Windows Server 2012R2 VM that is on Xen. We have done "migrations" like this before (backup with Veeam agent then do "baremetal restore"), but are having trouble with this particular VM. The restore itself seemed to go fine, but the VM will not boot. The VM was originally installed without UEFI (so it has no UEFI partition -- just an MBR one, which the Veeam recovery agent warned about). We have tried setting the system disk to both IDE and SATA.

If we have the BIOS set to seaBIOS, the VM boots to a point where it BSOD's then reboots and continues doing this until it goes to automatic repair, which it says it cannot do, then goes back into this BSOD loop. If we change the BIOS to OVMF (and add a EFI disk), it can't seem to find the boot disk at all. We have also set the hardware to pc-q35-8.0 but have also tried lower hardware values down to 6.0 but same issue.

The Proxmox server is configured with local-lvm and a very small local non-lvm partition (idea was to mostly just store ISOs and CT templates and have VMs on the local-lvm), so there isn't enough space to store a qcow2 image if we were to try using xenmigate.

Hoping others might have some other ideas here.

Thanks!

 

[sw-omit]

If you do a "basic" 2012R2 install directly on proxmox, till you're into Windows, and then do a bare-metal restore "on top" of that, does that work?
That said, when migrating the single 2012R2 machine from esx to proxmox, I did have some issues with that machine too which required some messing about too because of things with drivers and stuff (but because the server is scheduled for decommission anyway, once we had it to a "workable" state, we left it at that.)

 

[SilkBC]

If you do a "basic" 2012R2 install directly on proxmox, till you're into Windows, and then do a bare-metal restore "on top" of that, does that work?
That said, when migrating the single 2012R2 machine from esx to proxmox, I did have some issues with that machine too which required some messing about too because of things with drivers and stuff (but because the server is scheduled for decommission anyway, once we had it to a "workable" state, we left it at that.)

No, that would not work, as the bare-metal restore overwrites thesystem disk.

I have tried injecting the virtio-scsi drivers into the VM by using DISM and booted from a 2012R2 ISO and while it will start to boot (indicating that the virtio-scsi drivers are working), it still gets a BSOD then reboots. It wil only boot with seaBIOS; OVMF bios always results in no bootable device found" (the VM doesn't have a EFI partition; it is MBR boot)

 

[_gabriel]

try set vdisk as sata then boot once in Safemode then normal reboot.
To confirm if bsod is related.
btw, what bsod code have you ? 7b ?

of course keep SeaBIOS. it's not the problem.

 

[SilkBC]

try set vdisk as sata then boot once in Safemode then normal reboot.
To confirm if bsod is related.
btw, what bsod code have you ? 7b ?

of course keep SeaBIOS. it's not the problem.

It still BSOD's. Unfortunately we can't get a BSOD code because the BSOD just appears for a split second then the VM reboots.

One thing that may shed some light is that when we load the virtio drivers during the bare-metal restore (to the Veeam recovery can see the drive), the 2102r2 drives do not work -- the drive remains undetected. We have to use something like Windows 10 or Server 2022 to see the drive. Since those are the drivers the bare-metal restore injects into the VM, could it just be that they are incompatible?

Any reason the 2012r2 virtio drivers would not work?

 

[sw-omit]

Like I said before, I've had issues with those drivers as well.
To be completely honest, I even had to turn off driver signature verification for it to work (like I called it, "workable" and gone SOONTM), so MAYBE that allows you to at least boot for now. If not, going into that menu might at least allow you to turn off the auto-reboot at BSOD to see the code? That said, I did install the drivers and qemu agent (with the verification temporarily off... or was it installing the extracted certificated as trusted beforehand, I can't 100% remember now) before the final shutdown on the original machine

 

[_gabriel]

indeed if 2012 R2 have not the last Windows Updates,
you need virtio version 0.1.173 (released January 2020) with last SHA1 drivers signature support, for vanilla Win7+2008R2+2012R2.

but safemode can always boot in sata (and ide) mode whitout any drivers.
if BSOD , perhaps something is wrong is your p2v process.

 

[sw-omit]

Good to know, thanks _gabriel, if we do have to mess with that machine more, I might try to install those sometime.

 

[SilkBC]

indeed if 2012 R2 have not the last Windows Updates,
you need virtio verion 0.1.173 with last SHA1 drivers signature support, for vanilla Win7+2008R2+2012R2.

but safemode can always boot in sata (and ide) mode whitout any drivers.
if BSOD , perhaps something is wrong is your p2v process.

OK, will try that.

Looking at https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/, iooks like there is 0.1.173-1 up to 0.1.173-9. Does it matter which one, as long as it is one of he 0.1.173 versions? I would be inclined to get the "latest", but not sure if it would make a difference.

 

[_gabriel]

Does it matter which one, as long as it is one of he 0.1.173 versions?

yes, I remember I was testing all versions. this one works from Windows 7 to 2012 r2. perhaps some more recent works with 2012 r2.
You can always try more recent versions after Windows Update.