Restore to Azure issue

[eblend]

Hello,

Have been a Veeam customer for a while but never used the feature where you can restore to Azure. I set it up over the last few days and did a few tests, and it's been inconsistent. For example, I restored a small VM into the cloud, on-prem it's 4CPU and 8GB of RAM, with a single disk (60GB). When doing a restore into the cloud I chose A1 Basic as a size (1 vcpu, 1.75gb of ram, 2 disks max)for example and this VM restored no problem and is fully bootable. All documentation I found seems to point to the fact that as long as the VM can support the number of disks, the CPU and RAM of the Azure VM size doesn't matter, and this restore shows that.

I tried another VM, this time on-prem it's 2 CPU, 4GB RAM, and two drives, 50GB and a 20GB. I chose A2 Basic as the VM size (2 CPU, 3.5GB RAM, 4 disks max) and the restore went just like any other, fully successful from Veeam perspective, but the VM would NOT boot. The VM sits at a black screen with "no boot device found" or something along those lines. Checking the VM settings it does show the VM as having both disks. For fun I tried the same restore again as A3 VM size(4 vpu, 7gb RAM, 8 data disks) and the VM restored and booted without any issues. I have repeated this whole process 3 separate times, and every time A2 is chosen the restored VM doesn't boot, and when A3 is chosen, it boots no problem.

So trying to understand if anyone has seen this before and if there is something more that's at play here. It's almost like there is some additional dependency here. My issue is that if we have a disaster and have to restore a bunch of VMs to Azure to get things going, I don't want to be spending a few hours restoring massive VMs to only have them not boot, because I chose a VM size that's somehow isn't compatible.

[Gostev]

Hello, please include Veeam support case ID for this issue, as requested when you click New Topic. Thanks!

[eblend]

I didn't bother creating a case yet, was hoping to avoid doing that since I thought it was something obvious, hence why I posted on the forum to research. If the case is required I will make a case and not bother posting here. Seems redundant and doesn't really benefit me, no? Anyways if you want a case I will open a case but you might as well close this thread as I will deal with support directly.

[eblend]

I figured it out for anyone who is interested. At one point we had Hyper-V in the environment and machines that were converted from Hyper-V to VMware all came across as UEFI boot. UEFI boot is only supported on Gen2 VMs in Azure, and A-Series is not Gen2, has to be B-Series and above. It doesn't explain why the VM worked on a bigger A-Series machine but I will ignore that for now. What finally got me to this resolution was to try to replicate this machine into Azure with Zerto, a product we are running a POC on for DR. I tried to select exact same VM size to see if Zerto would work where Veeam failed, and Zerto gave me a nice warning telling me that the machine type selected is not compatible. I wish Veeam had some error checking built into their Restore to Azure functionality as well, would have saved me the troubles. The other machine that I was testing was always a VMware machine and has BIOS so it worked with any A-Size restore.

[eblend]

Further update. After a lengthy restore, the VM still did not boot. Seems like Veeam will always create a Gen1 machine and any VM with EFI boot won't boot. There is no easy way to change an existing VM to Gen2, so this is a pretty big limitation. Case opened just in case we are missing something, 04125455

[veremin]

any VM with EFI boot won't boot

This is generally not true, as backup server conducts the UEFI-to-BIOS conversion during the restore process.

As to ability to restore to Generation 2 VM, we're already working on this feature. No ETA at the moment, though.

Thanks!

[eblend]

I just did another restore of the same machine I mentioned before to an A3, this machine is EFI in VMware and it did power on like last time and I do see it changed from GTP to MBR and is a Gen1 machine in Azure. I didn't check this during previous restores so can verify this time around. Another machine I tried was with 4 disks, gave it a much bigger size and it didn't boot. I tried that machine twice and it wouldn't boot. For fun i put the same machine into Zerto and let it replicate, and it powered on no problem, however it seems Zerto already support Gen2 machines as it came over as Gen2 in Azure.

Hope the feature comes out in not too distant future, or hopefully support can point us in the right direction. So far I have been asked for logs of the error message.....however there was no error, the restore said all was fine, it just the VM won't boot and without console access in Azure it's impossible to troubleshoot (wish Microsoft really addressed this)

[veremin]

however there was no error, the restore said all was fine, it just the VM won't boot and without console access in Azure it's impossible to troubleshoot (wish Microsoft really addressed this

I think you can still enable boot diagnostics on the machine and, then, check the boot load screenshot. Or you can mount the system to a different machine for further diagnostic. Support engineer should be able to do this and many other tricks to find the root cause of the issue, so, keep working with them.

Thanks!

[computer_says_no]

Having the exact same issue restoring two hyper-v machine from two separate images which are both Gen2 VM's but showing as Gen1 in Azure. No errors popped up during the transfer and all the correct components show in Azure. Boot diags just shows either a blank screen with a cursor or boot device not available. I've not tried restoring to AWS EC2 but this shouldn't be a feature if it doesn't fully work with Azure. I'm reading into way to try and repair the disk by attaching to another VM in Azure but seems a right pain when all we want to do is migrate some simple VM's.

I'll log a ticket with support but doesn't sound promising at the moment.

[computer_says_no]

Also tried to restore a Gen1 Windows 10 Pro machine which lives Win 2012 r2 host and that still will not work. The machine gets stuck in an endless boot cycle which you can see with boot diags on in Azure.

[Gostev]

Please remember to share the support case ID, so we can track the case. Thanks!

[computer_says_no]

Hi Again,

The Case #04265733 if you need to keep track. Think I've found the main part of the issue for the Gen2 machines running Win 2012 r2. I was restoring them to Azure as Basic A2 machine 2x vCPU and they wouldn't boot. Trying most things I changed the size after the restore to Standard A4 v2 and they have started to boot fine. The VM's hosted on-prem did have 4x vCPU so that makes more sense but I just wanted to keep the monthly cost down as they aren't major important.

I've still having issues though with the Gen1 machine which I got slightly wrong its a Win 7 Pro SP2 x64 machine. Microsoft support are taking a look at the VM to see if they can figure out why the machine will not boot after the restore.