Virtualize Me - Windows - Troubleshooting

Completed with one or more errors

Cause

If the physical machine has any mount points, the data on the mount point is restored. However, during the virtualization operation, the mount points are not created and mapped to the VM.

Solution

Manually map the mount points on the virtual machine.

Virtualize Me Job Fails and the Virtual Machine is Deleted

Symptom

Virtualize Me Job fails and the virtual machine is deleted.

Cause

The Virtualize Me job may have failed in one of the many stages of the Virtualize Me or 1-Touch Recovery process.

Solution

Create the SkipDeleteVm additional setting to 1 on the CommServe computer and resubmit the Virtualize Me job. If the Virtualize ME job fails again, the virtual machine will display all the logs and errors that can be used for troubleshooting purposes.

Full system restore job takes a long time to complete

Symptom

Full System Restore job may take excessively long time to complete.

Cause

The VM consumes very high memory from the total memory available on the ESX Server

Solution

Kill the Full System Restore job and then kill Virtualize Machine job.
Reduce the memory of the VM. For more information, refer to Modifying the Hardware Configuration for a Virtual Machine.

VM provisioning fails

Cause

The client computer has a SCSI controller with multiple disks.

Solution

Kill the Virtualize Machine job. Distribute the disks on the client computer such that each controller will have only one disk. Perform the virtualization operation again.

Virtual machine does not reboot automatically

Cause

If the client computer has 2 disks, the disk drive numbers may not correspond as expected during the full system restore. As a result, the system disk will be restored as a second disk and virtual machine fails to reboot. For more information about issues in disk enumeration, refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937251.

Solution

Change the order of the disks from the BIOS Settings after the restore completes.

Disks go offline after the Virtualize Me operation

Symptom

The secondary disks of a client appear offline in the Windows Disk Management console after the virtualization operation completes and the client reboots.

Cause

This problem appears when the primary disk of the client is IDE/SATA disk and the secondary disks are iSCSCI or SCSI disks.

For more information, refer to http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1013109.

Solution

Use Windows Disk Management tool to bring the disks Online after the virtualization operation.

Unable to setup remote connection to the SQL Server on a clone computer

Symptom

After creating the clone of a computer which hosts the SQL server, you can login and query the SQL server database on the clone computer. However, the remote connection to the SQL server on the clone computer fails. The applications, which use @@SERVERNAME function, may have problem in connecting to the SQL server.

Cause

The SQL Server stores the local computer name in sys.servers table in the master database. This name is reported by the system function @@SERVERNAME. When you create the clone, you specify the new name for the clone computer. Therefore, the local computer name in the sys.servers table will not match with the new name.

Solution

You can directly replace the <old computer name> with the <new computer name> in the database directly using proper queries. Otherwise, if you are using the stand-alone SQL server and not the SQL Server failover cluster, follow the steps given below to update the database with the new name:

Disconnect any remote logins to the SQL server. Use the following commands to disconnect the remote logins:

Remote logins to default instance:
```
sp dropremotelogin <old name>
    
```
Remote logins to a named instance:
```
sp dropremotelogin <old name\instancename>
    
```
On the clone computer that hosts the default instance of the SQL server, run the following commands:
```
sp_dropserver <old_name>
    
```
Press Enter.
```
sp_addserver <new_name>, local
    
```
Press Enter

Or

If the Clone computer hosts the named instance of the SQL server, run the following commands:
```
sp_dropserver <'old_name\instancename'>
    
```
Press Enter.
```
sp_addserver <'new_name\instancename'>, local
    
```
Press Enter.
Restart the SQL server instance.

When you Clone the computer which hosts the SQL server, keep in mind:

SQL Server does not support renaming computers that are involved in replication.
After cloning a machine that is configured to use Reporting Services, Reporting Services might not be available on the Cloned machine. Refer Renaming a Report Server Computer on msdn library.
If you have created a Windows group to access the SQL server and that group uses a hard-coded reference to the computer name, update the Windows group to specify the new computer name. Otherwise, users in that group will not be able to connect to the SQL server.
Linked server configurations will be affected by the cloning operation.
Client aliases that use named pipes will be affected by the cloning operation.

All the links referring to the SharePoint instances on a clone computer are broken

Symptom

After creating the clone of a computer which hosts the SharePoint server, all the links which refer to the SharePoint instance on the clone computer are not working.

Cause

When you create the clone, you specify the new name for the clone computer. The SharePoint database is not updated automatically with new name. Thus all the site references with SharePoint will refer to the site with the old name.

Solution

Update the SharePoint database with the new computer name.

Update SharePoint Server 2007

Follow the steps given below to update the database of the SharePoint Server 2007:

Login to the SharePoint Server. You should be the member of Administrators group on the local computer.

If the clone computer hosts SQL server and SharePoint server, you must use the same user account to update SQL server database and SharePoint sever database.
Open a command prompt window and navigate to the folder where stsadm.exe is available.

Generally the STSADM tool is available at the following location:
```
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN
    
```
Enter the following command:
```
stsadm -o renameserver -newservername <newname> -oldservername <oldname>
    
```
where <newname> is the name of the clone computer

<oldname> is the name of the original computer.

This operation will change the server name only within the SharePoint system. It will only replaces the SharePoint system entries for old server name with new name in SharePoint databases.
Open Central Administration.
Click on the Operations tab
Click on the Alternate access mappings link under the Global Configuration.
Modify each mapping item to reflect your new server name, make sure to keep port numbers unchanged.
Rename all the old server names with the new server name.
Reboot the machine.

You may also run the SharePoint Product Configuration wizard.

Update SharePoint Server 2010

Login to the SharePoint Server. You should be the member of Administrators group on the local computer.

If the clone computer hosts SQL server and SharePoint server, you must use the same user account to update SQL server database and SharePoint sever database.
Open a command prompt window and navigate to the folder where stsadm.exe is available.

Generally the STSADM tool is available at the following location:
```
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN
    
```
Enter the following command:
```
stsadm -o renameserver -newservername <newname> -oldservername <oldname>
    
```
where <newname> is the name of the clone computer

<oldname> is the name of the original computer.

This operation will change the server name only within the SharePoint system. It will only replaces the SharePoint system entries for old server name with new name in SharePoint databases.
Run the SharePoint Product Configuration wizard. This wizard modifies all the old server names with the new server name and keeps the port numbers unchanged.

Additional Troubleshooting

For information about additional troubleshooting scenarios, refer to following topic

Troubleshooting - 1-Touch for Windows