VMware Tools and Hardware Version upgrade on Windows Server Core Domain Controller

VMware, Windows Server

Apple Core

Recently I was “playing” a bit with Windows Server 2008 R2 Core VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware upgrade from version 3.5 to 4.1. Migration went fine from one environment to another, but the rest went totally wrong. I got immediately BSOD - Blue Screen Of Death.

My patient was Windows Server 2008 R2 Core Active Directory domain controller with database on separate disk.

I was following solution described here http://www.totalnetsolutions.net/, but there is other way to do this.

The main problem is that, after virtual hardware upgrade from version 4 to 7 Windows doesn’t recognize disks where Active Directory database is located. In order to fix this issue you need to change SAN policy in diskpart.

Here are steps how you can do it:

  • Login to your server
  • Start diskpart
  • Type **SAN **to check what policy is set
  • If your policy is OfflineAll or OfflineShared- change it to OnlineAll by typing SAN POLICY=OnlineAll

Also to summarize I would like to guide you how you should perform VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware upgrade.

  1. Perform backup of server
  2. Migrate Virtual Machine to “new” environment
  3. Perform upgrade of VMware Tools
  4. Take a snapshot of VM
  5. Check current VMware tools version - go to VMware Tools directory and execute command vmware-toolbox-cmd -v. Then compare version to other VM’s in your new environment to check if upgrade was really done.
  6. Change SAN policy
  7. Power off Virtual Machine
  8. Upgrade Virtual Hardware
  9. Start Virtual Machine
  10. Reconfigure IP setting if they are missing
  11. SUCCESS!
  12. Change policy to original one + reboot