VMWare can't boot recovered VMDK file

[christiankelly]

I have an emergency case open and I'm waiting for call back. But I was using Endpoint backup for a physical server and it failed. I brought in an ESXi host and restored the server as a VMDK to that ESXi host. When attaching the disk and booting the VM it doesn't find the hard disk looks for network boot and fails with an "Operating System not found" error.

Anyone know what I can try here? It's critical to get this server running.

Thanks,

[nielsengelen]

Which OS did you recover?

[Mike Resseler]

Christian,

Did you took an entire backup of that server? It might be better that you create an empty VM on the ESXi host. Then connect the recovery media ISO to it and boot from there and do a Bare Metal Restore (as you would do to a physical server recovery...) It is possible that your physical server has hidden partitions that aren't recovered when you restore it as a VMDK. You probably only are restoring the C and (other drive letters) volumes without realizing that there are hidden partitions.

I would go for the BMR option and see if that recovery works

Mike

[christiankelly]

EFI boot was the issue. I changed it in the ESXi and it booted right up.

[Mike Resseler]

Ah,

Good to know and glad it got solved

Cheers
Mike