Background

I have a test network at work which I use to 'mess around with', learning new technologies, programs, and systems. There isn't anything operational on the network, but if I lost anything it would be annoying.

The centre of the network is a Dell server that is currently excess to requirements, part of an EMC Avamar pilot a couple of years ago that is no longer required (the server, certainly not Avamar).

Server Specification

Dell PowerEdge 2950

•   2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon 'Harpertown' X5460 @ 3.16GHz
•   16Gb FB-DIMM RAM
•   6 x 1Tb SATA drives in RAID6 on PERC 6/i
•   2 x Broadcom BCM5708C NetXtreme II GigE Adapter
•   2 x Intel Pro/1000 Dual Port Server Adapter

About 12 months ago, I installed VMWare ESXi 4 on the server, and it has been running flawlessly since then. It's not taxed very much, usually having only 2 VMs running on it - a Server 2008 R2 AD/DNS, and a Server 2008 R2 running WSUS and File Service.

Recently I setup a Hyper-V server at home, so thought I might do the same for the work test network, however I didn't have a second server to gracefully move the data and configurations across.

Surely there's an easy way to migrate from one technology to another?

Apparently System Centre Virtual Machine Manager does a nice job, if you have that type of infrastructure and a spare server to move the VMs. I didn't so here is what I used. It's a lesson, that's for sure… 

Migration Process

As mentioned, I didn't have a spare server so I needed to get everything off the ESXi box, wipe it, and put everything back onto Hyper-V. 

1. Use the wonderful SysInternals Disk2VHD to take a VHD copy of my running Virtual Machines. I copied them straight across to another network share on a PC. That takes a while at 100Mbit let me tell you. 
2. Reboot with Windows Server 2008 R2 disc and wipe the server!! I'm pretty sure I had copied everything off… 
3. Install Server 2008 R2 Full Enterprise onto a 50Gb partition and configure the Hyper-V Role. 
4. Copy back across the previously created .VHD files from network share. 
5. Create a new Virtual Machine for AD/DNS server pointing the Hard Disk at the .VHD file 
6. Turn the VM on!! 
7. Cry when "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL" appears on the screen. That doesn't sound good. 
8. Start GoogleBinging for possible fixes to this issue. 

Fix Process 

1. First I mounted the .VHD files in Disk Management and deleted some odd 100Mb partition that seemed to come across as part of the Disk2VHD process. Maybe they were important, I don't know. 
   
2. Run Check Disk on the mounted VHD, just in case. And mark the partition as active. 
   
3. Boot the VM from the 2008 R2 install CD and choose the Repair option. 
   
4. Select the Command Prompt option and run the following commands on the C: drive.  
   
   1. bootrec /rebuildbcd  
   2. bootrec /fixboot  
   3. Use dispart to make the partition active if you didn't do it earlier  
   4. Run x:\sources\recovery\StartRep.exe 

One, or all, of these options did something, because it then booted back into a perfectly working machine. The only things I had to change were the network addresses (due to change in VMWare and HyperV network adapters), and to remove the VMWare Tools. 

I then updated to SP1 RC on host and guests so that I could take advantage of Hyper-V Dynamic memory, which works really well. 

Here endeth the lesson. 

Not sure if I'd do anything different, but it might have been handy to keep the old machine around until I had the new one running. 

Please provide feedback, comments, and possible alternate solutions. 

Nigel

Posted in: [Miscellaneous], [Windows Server], [Virtualisation]

Popular tags: microsoft, server, esxi, hyperv