Good day All,
Welcome back!!!!
We started to test Oct 2017 SPP on HP Gen 9 Windows 2012 R2 Servers and as part of the testing we picked couple of Non-Production Servers to start the deploy.
As part of the prerequisites we did the following
1. System state back was taken and kept in the D drive
2. SPP was copied local to system. I know lot of people think why but sometimes we have seen NIC drivers disapper and if you have to deploy them you have to mount ISO etc to Server.
So online SPP was run and all the components got installed and after reboot Server didn't come online and after the Post Boot status we will get to below error and will just reboot again
Vendor case was opened and following steps was performed
1. Controller drivers was downgraded by booting through UEFI
2.System board replaced
3.Controller cards replaced
4. CPU replace
5. again a new system board replaced
6. New disk in empty slot and tried to boot from OS cd still not able to boot the Server in legacy mode
case was escalated to L3 and they had no idea why it was and writing of this post they still looking why the error.
As part of troubleshooting we had spent like a week on it, Client was getting hot on it and we decided that lets try UEFI and see if we an reinstall the OS
When we started to boot through UEFI , we had to format only the C drive accidentally whole drive was formatted and new C drive was created.
So we proceeded with OS install and Windows 2012 successfully got installed
At this point we had 2 choice
1. Install all the tools and handover the Server to Client saying Servers is down and we couldn't recovery and request for app install
2. Option 2 was to try the restore process, i had only 10% hope because System state taken was when the Server was in legacy mode so we are now in UEFI mode so will it work was the big question
Following steps was performed
1. As we lost both drivers, we requested our Backup team to restore both C and D drive complete restore with permissions(Note: make sure not to reboot the Server at this point)
2. After restore was done we could see the system state backup
3. Luckily before we requested backup team to do a restored we had enabled the Windows backup client feature both GUI and Command line. The reason i said it because after C drive was restored the MMC showed corrupt error and we couldn't open any MMC.
At that point we thought we screwed :)
4. Well then remember we installed the Command tools as well so we started to try the command tool syntax
a. first step was to get the version date of the system state backup
wbadmin get versions -backupTarget:d:
b. Following command was run to initiate the restore...
wbadmin start systemstaterecovery -version:08/25/2008-06:45 -backupTarget:D:
c. Accept to restore yes and the restore process started and completed successfully
5. After the system state restore was done, rebooted the Server and started to look at ILO session to see what would happen.
Server after the post, loading Windows and started to apply some changes and again it rebooted.
6. After the first reboot Windows started to load and we say a successful Windows login screen and after login everything was intact and all Applications came back clean with no errors.
Couldn't believe my eyes because not sure if anyone tested this kind of scenario in the past but this was first time for me that a backup taken in legacy mode we could restore the Server in UEFI Mode.
Always a learning lesson and hoping this will help someone too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Until next one you all have good day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome back!!!!
We started to test Oct 2017 SPP on HP Gen 9 Windows 2012 R2 Servers and as part of the testing we picked couple of Non-Production Servers to start the deploy.
As part of the prerequisites we did the following
1. System state back was taken and kept in the D drive
2. SPP was copied local to system. I know lot of people think why but sometimes we have seen NIC drivers disapper and if you have to deploy them you have to mount ISO etc to Server.
So online SPP was run and all the components got installed and after reboot Server didn't come online and after the Post Boot status we will get to below error and will just reboot again
Vendor case was opened and following steps was performed
1. Controller drivers was downgraded by booting through UEFI
2.System board replaced
3.Controller cards replaced
4. CPU replace
5. again a new system board replaced
6. New disk in empty slot and tried to boot from OS cd still not able to boot the Server in legacy mode
case was escalated to L3 and they had no idea why it was and writing of this post they still looking why the error.
As part of troubleshooting we had spent like a week on it, Client was getting hot on it and we decided that lets try UEFI and see if we an reinstall the OS
When we started to boot through UEFI , we had to format only the C drive accidentally whole drive was formatted and new C drive was created.
So we proceeded with OS install and Windows 2012 successfully got installed
At this point we had 2 choice
1. Install all the tools and handover the Server to Client saying Servers is down and we couldn't recovery and request for app install
2. Option 2 was to try the restore process, i had only 10% hope because System state taken was when the Server was in legacy mode so we are now in UEFI mode so will it work was the big question
Following steps was performed
1. As we lost both drivers, we requested our Backup team to restore both C and D drive complete restore with permissions(Note: make sure not to reboot the Server at this point)
2. After restore was done we could see the system state backup
3. Luckily before we requested backup team to do a restored we had enabled the Windows backup client feature both GUI and Command line. The reason i said it because after C drive was restored the MMC showed corrupt error and we couldn't open any MMC.
At that point we thought we screwed :)
4. Well then remember we installed the Command tools as well so we started to try the command tool syntax
a. first step was to get the version date of the system state backup
wbadmin get versions -backupTarget:d:
b. Following command was run to initiate the restore...
wbadmin start systemstaterecovery -version:08/25/2008-06:45 -backupTarget:D:
c. Accept to restore yes and the restore process started and completed successfully
5. After the system state restore was done, rebooted the Server and started to look at ILO session to see what would happen.
Server after the post, loading Windows and started to apply some changes and again it rebooted.
6. After the first reboot Windows started to load and we say a successful Windows login screen and after login everything was intact and all Applications came back clean with no errors.
Couldn't believe my eyes because not sure if anyone tested this kind of scenario in the past but this was first time for me that a backup taken in legacy mode we could restore the Server in UEFI Mode.
Always a learning lesson and hoping this will help someone too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Until next one you all have good day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
