(Must stress here that the problem is not with Veeam Backup, just that it was after the Veeam Backup that the filesystem corruption occured - the problem is down to the P2V conversion itself)
Problem:
After a physical to virtual conversion of a Windows 2003 Small Business Server, using the VMware Converter coldclone bootable CD onto a network share on a laptop (because there is no direct access to a hosting companies Virtual Center.) The uploaded P2V conversion runs well until an attempt is made to back it up using Veeam (Veeam Backup 5 in this case.) The backup completes with the warning below and fails to commit the temporary snapshot:
Removing snapshot
Failed to retrieve "SCSI (0:0) Hard disk 1" disk information. Check VM virtual hardware configuration.
Wrong number of extents - 81, descriptorFile "nfc://conn:vcenter,nfchost:host-1705,stg:datastore-7019@SBS/SBS-000001.vmdk"
Veeam Backup will attempt to remove snapshot during the next job cycle, but you may consider removing snapshot manually.
Possible causes for snapshot removal failure:
- Network connectivity issue, or vCenter Server is too busy to serve the request
- ESX host was unable to process snapshot removal request in a timely manner
- Snapshot was already removed by another application
Then, after manually committing the snapshot, the server starts reporting NTFS errors, corrupt file errors, and upon reboot falls into a completely unrecoverable state.
Solution:
The fix in this case was to do a Virtual to Virtual (V2V) conversion on a pre-backup copy of the server (had done a cold clone of the original uploaded server prior to it being backed up) using the coldclone bootable CD, pointing directly to vCenter. After this the backup ran fine.
The problem was down to the original P2V being done using the coldclone bootable CD onto a network share on a laptop, which was then uploaded to the hosting environment (the P2V had not been done directly to the vCenter as this was not possible.)
One additional step:
After the V2V, the VMware tools status was OK but mouse capture and release had stopped working, to fix:
From vSphere client:
VM -> Guest -> Install/Upgrade VMware Tools
Interactive Tools Upgrade
Repair
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