Changing an ESXI SVR12R2 to Hyper-V involves migrating the virtual machine and adjusting configurations.
Changing an ESXI SVR12R2 to Hyper-V involves migrating the virtual machine and adjusting configurations.
Hi everyone, we're working on converting three ESXI instances to Hyper-V as requested by our customer. After some successful trials in office mode, we managed to convert two of them using the Starwind V2V converter. The third instance, which is a domain controller running UEFI Windows Server 2012R2, converted without issues. However, launching the Gen-2 instance in Hyper-V caused problems—spinning dots appeared and an error message showed "Windows has encountered an error and will reboot." It also displayed "windows has encountered an error and will reboot" followed by "inaccessible boot device," though the screen briefly showed the drive before rebooting. After another attempt, it entered recovery mode. Unfortunately, the customer doesn’t have the AD password for the root account needed to run commands, so we left everything as-is in the ESXI environment. We also tried booting from an ISO image and ran bootrec / bcdedit commands online, but none resolved the issue. We attempted a backup via Acronis 12.5 and restored it as a VM, which also failed with the same symptoms. We installed a shell server 2012R2 in UEFI mode and tried restoring the C drive from the server to the shell 2012R2 drive, but the results remained unchanged. We've also created an ESXI VMDK for testing in our office to see if booting would work better. Anyone have any ideas or steps we could try next? It seems the boot device isn’t accessible after conversion. All other servers handled it fine. Thanks!
I had a positive outcome using Starwinds V2V Converter for P2V or V2V setups on older Windows servers running ESXi or Hyper-V. After converting two out of three virtual machines and trying Acronis Backup without success, I suspect the issue lies with the Windows 2012 R2 boot sequence rather than the conversion itself. If you're moving just a domain controller, I recommend spinning a fresh, well-configured DC virtual machine on top of Hyper-V instead of attempting conversion. This method has proven more reliable, as it lets you replace the old DC with a clean, updated version without disrupting existing configurations. Make sure to transfer all FSMO roles and properly downgrade the old controller before proceeding.
I understand the situation, but unfortunately we're dealing with a Domain Controller plus SQL for an application they use. They're also using DHCP and Azure integration for Office 365 emails, along with around 20 computers on the network. Right now, we aim to prevent another domain reset and major reconfiguration since time is limited and any downtime would be costly. A direct conversion seems ideal. I'm not sure why this one virtual instance is experiencing boot issues while others are working fine. The only clear observation is that it's an EFi instead of a Legacy setup.
@Net Runner has become the main point now. We converted a VMDK file using the StarWind 2v converter, set up an ESXI instance in our office with the same version, but it was tested without RAID as a demo only. After loading the VMDK, it activated immediately.
Are there other factors contributing to the boot failure following the conversion?