Restoring an image from a RAID-based system? (VMWare)

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Psychor

Limp Gawd
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My main PC has two SATA hard drives in a RAID0 setup using Intel ICHR9. The contents of the RAID array are backed every two weeks to a server via Drive Snapshot.

A couple of months ago I downloaded VMWare Workstation 6.5, created a VM and restored an image to said PC to the VM. The image seemed to have been successfully restored to the VM. I did have to repair the MBR on the VM but once this was done I was able to start to boot into Windows. However, while booting into Windows on the VM it soon blue screened on me. While I don't have the details of the blue screen on me the problem seems to be the RAID array. Specifically the lack of the virtualization of the RAID controller, etc.

I also downloaded VMWare Converter and this worked like a charm. I converted said PC to a VM and was able to boot into Windows on the VM without an issue using VMWare Player. I'm assuming VMWare Converter essentially "removed" RAID from the equation during the conversion process.

My question is, do I have any options for getting the image to correctly restore to a VM?

I appreciate any and all input. Keep in mind I'm somewhat new to virtualization. Thanks.
 
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your best bet would be to use sysprep + converter on your backup image, to restore to a vm.

you are correct that the BSOD would be caused by the lack of the ability to virtualize the RAID controller. Converter will take the backup image and convert it into a format that is supported by Workstation. However, it can only do the hardware virtualization that it supports. As stated, there's no support for virtual RAID adapters, so that's out. The problem is that the Windows OS has, and is expecting to initialize, the RAID drivers and software, during the boot process.

When it gets to the point where it's initializing the RAID controller driver, and the hardware that the driver supports, it BSODs, because that hardware no longer exists. The drives that it expects to find on the RAID controllers PCI device listings are not present. This causes a kernel panic, and the OS boot fails.

Using Sysprep is a standard practice that pre-dates virtualization. People use it to take a machine image (sometimes referred to as a master, or gold disc), so that the image can be deployed onto multiple machines for large roll outs, or deployments. Sysprep will strip out the Windows SID, and any machine specific device drivers. the software on the machine remains installed (applications, etc), but anything that would cause the image to be tied to the hardware (windows activation codes, drivers, etc.) are removed. When the image is applied to another machine, all that's needed is the network config, the license, and the drivers. This is much easier than rebuilding machines from scratch, when dealing with a large scale.

Cliffs: Get Sysprep, and use in conjunction with Converter
 
Hi, I would like to give you my experience as well. It may not solve your problem directly but keep that option in mind in future in case you have more complicated scenario especially on the server side.

One of the common VM deployment issues relates to physical storage driver that does not have equivalent in VM environment. The free VMWARE Converter Standalone is pretty good and can deal with all kind of issues including converting to proper storage support in the P2V process.

However, in some rare cases, converter is not able to help easily. Example. I have a Windows NT 4.0 box with Pentium 3 and 128MB RAM and RAID storage. The OS is not supported, host is too slow and resource starve to attempt the VMWare Converter process.

If you are willing to go low-level, an elaborate alternative method can be used by adopting the Ultimate-P2V method (google for it). In short, it goes through many steps and eventually injects the necessary VM storage driver into the migrated virtual environment. It may prove useful in certain odd scenarios.
 
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