Veeam 6.1 vSphere 5 Replicas

[silversov]

Hi there,

We are currently replicating Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition (32 bit) servers using Veeam 6.1 to a vSphere 5 host which is used for DR.

Recently I tried to test the replicas by attempting to start them from the DR host. Unfortunately they don't start and report an invalid boot.ini file followed by NTDETECT failed.

The replication jobs are always successful and report no errors.

Has anyone else seen this behaviour in a Veeam replica? Is this in some way related to the way we have configured the replication job? Perhaps someone has heard of this being a known issue with Veeam 6.1 although I can't seem to find any reference in the forums?

Silversov

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Scott,

Could you please clarify me whether you've started these replicas before or not? What is the test procedure you're using to verify your replicas? Do you start these VMs manually via vSphere Client?

Thanks!

[silversov]

We managed to resolve this issue after three days of scratching our heads.

It appears as though the disk size was the issue. I’ll explain why and how just in case this happens to anyone else.

Firstly, this particular customer was originally migrated from Hyper-V to VMware in a V2V migration which possibly contributed to this issue.

After the conversion from VHD to VMDK, a disk will appear in VMware as a particular size for example 70GB. Although this looks fine for all intent and purposes, it appears as though the conversion has caused some form of disk size calculation issue. When Veeam snapshots the disks it pulls that irregularity with it into the replica. The result is a replica that won’t start with one of the following errors:
• Invalid boot.ini
• Error cannot find operating system

VMware seems to handle the disk size irregularity, however, Veeam replicas don’t.

To resolve the issue, we increased the size of the VMDK by 1GB i.e. from 70GB to 71GB. Hey presto, the replicas start as expected and everything looks fine.

This was very difficult to isolate as there was nothing to indicate a disk size issue in VMware or Veeam. Really strange issue, and to be honest one of two issues in my IT career that has had me absolutely stumped.

Anyway, we will assume this has resolved the issue and move on from here. I still need to investigate why this happened and will post any updates I find.

Cheers

Scott

[Vitaliy S.]

Thank you for coming back and sharing your resolution. I believe that a V2V migration must have contributed to this issue, as I haven't seen these issues before with regular VM replicas.