Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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Frosty
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STOP: c00002e2 Directory Services could not start

Post by Frosty »

It seems that I have run into this error again. We are testing our DR restore capabilities. Restored one of our DCs, fired it up, it boots, gets to the login screen, sits there for maybe 2-3 minutes, reboots itself, starts up again ... then hits:

STOP: c00002e2 Directory services could not start.
A device attached to the system is not functioning.
Error Status: 0x0000001
Please shutdown this system and reboot into Directory Services Restore Mode

Now we've fiddled around with the VM, rebooting it a few times, managed to get into DSRM okay, but can't get past the error. The DC VMs in question are checked monthly via a SureBackup job and its been working fine for the past 3 months.

I should also mention that the environment we are restoring in has zero functioning DCs; we're testing what happens in the event of complete systems loss.

I somehow don't think that DSRM is actually really the issue. The message "device attached to the system is not functioning" sounds like a virtual hardware issue. Anyway, when I did get the VM booted up into DSRM mode and logged in, I checked in msconfig to see if anything looked wrong. The "safe boot" option was already unchecked, so Veeam had already done its work there (?).

The backups I am restoring are about 4 months old. We've had some VMware host patches applied since then. I updated my DR servers to be running the latest ESXi v5.1 Update 3, same as my Production servers now, but I suspect that the backups were taken when we were running on an earlier version of ESXi.

Could that stop the restore process(es) working properly? (it would trouble me greatly if that were true!)

I'm going to try restoring some more recent backups now, just to see whether last nights backups give me a different result. I expect they will restore fine. Anyway, I will report back once I have more data.

I haven't logged a support ticket yet; thought I would get some informal feedback first, but will open a ticket if that's the best way to find out what's happening.
Frosty
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Re: STOP: c00002e2 Directory Services could not start

Post by Frosty » 2 people like this post

Found this comment in a discussion thread elsewhere on the 'Net as I was looking for possible reasons:

"You restored from a 2 month old backup of a domain server? Sounds like you restored an old Kerberos password. Your domain trust most likely isn't accurate anymore."

Would that be likely to cause inability to restore DC VMs? Sounds somewhat plausible to me. In a real DR restore situation, we would be restoring DCs that are only 1 or 2 days old, not 3 months as in this test.
Frosty
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Re: STOP: c00002e2 Directory Services could not start

Post by Frosty » 2 people like this post

I have now successfully restored our DC1 and DC2 from last night's Veeam backups. Worked perfectly. After starting them up and waiting for them to stabilise, was able to successfully test replication between them with 'dcdiag' and 'repadmin', then make changes in AD on one and get it replicated to the other. So I am 100% happy with that outcome.

Still interested in what might had caused my initial restore of my November backups to have trouble though! I don't like "not understanding" things.
lkn@wwi.dk
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Re: STOP: c00002e2 Directory Services could not start

Post by lkn@wwi.dk »

Hi

i ran into the same problem, and the solution is - veeams logic isent taking hands of this old copy

you have to disable time sync on your vm

I did it in vmware with this:

time.synchronize.continue 0
time.synchronize.restore 0
time.synchronize.resume.disk 0
time.synchronize.resume.host 0
time.synchronize.shrink 0
time.synchronize.tols.enable 0
time.synchronize.tools.startup 0

Then set it in bios - boot - let it run
Frosty
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Re: STOP: c00002e2 Directory Services could not start

Post by Frosty »

I'm not sure I completely understand what it is that you did.
Any chance that you could elaborate a bit?
In my environment I don't sync time in VMs to match time on ESXi hosts.
We sync time directly in Windows from our Primary DC to time servers at ntp.org (au.pool.ntp.org).
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