Is P2V Windows Server 2008 R2 with dynamic spanned disks supported for migration to Azure ?

Question

Hello,
We're doing a large scale migration project which consists of VmWare ESXi and physical machines being migrated to Azure through Azure Migrate (ASR).

We have a particular issue with Windows 2008 R2 server using about 10 dynamic spanned volume data disks which gives a 0x0000009F DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSOD on reboot/shutdown. Further analysis shows the issue lies with the volmgrsx.sys driver. Also the server takes forever to reboot/shutdown.

The original machine disk setup is as following:

------------------------------------------ MPIO check -------------------------------------------
MPIO Disk System Disk LB Policy DSM Name

---

MPIO Disk10 Disk 10 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk9 Disk 9 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk8 Disk 8 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk7 Disk 7 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk6 Disk 6 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk5 Disk 5 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk4 Disk 4 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk3 Disk 3 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk2 Disk 2 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk1 Disk 1 RR Microsoft DSM
MPIO Disk0 Disk 0 RR Microsoft DSM

I would like to ask if P2V migration of Windows Server 2008 R2 with **dynamic spanned disks with MPIO supported for migration to Azure ?**

This article https://bit.ly/3eH4iZ1 says that

Dynamic disk OS disk must be a basic disk.
Data disks can be dynamic disks
"Guest/server multipath (MPIO) No"

If not, how such server can be migrated without the loss of data (by converting the disks from dynamic to basic?)

Many thanks,
Michael

Answer 1

Hi Michael,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A.
The bugcheck 0x9f DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE indicates that the driver is in an inconsistent or invalid power state, seems like a disk problem after the migration. You can refer to the link below to check the detailed information of 0x9f DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/bug-check-0x9f--driver-power-state-failure

For the migration issue, here is an Microsoft official website which details the migration as physical servers to Azureusing using Azure Migrate:Server Migration tool:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/migrate/tutorial-migrate-physical-virtual-machines

Best regards,
Molly

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Answer 2

Hey,

You can try using StarWind V2V Converter to Convert physical drives directly to Azure. I am not sure it will work with Dynamic drives, but V2V is free and you can achieving your goal.
Hope it will help: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v2v-help/P2VScenarioPhysicalDisksandPhysicalMachine.html

Cheers,

Alex Bykovskyi

StarWind Software

Note: Posts are provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

Answer 3

Thanks for your answer and suggestion, but first I need to understand what is causing this behavior. Also, using a 3rd party software is currently out of the question.

Answer 4

Hi Molly,

Thanks for your response and your very informative article. After debugging the crash dump, the underlying driver at fault was volsnap.sys, what led me to a hypothesis that this BSOD might've been caused by an antivirus software (Symantec Endpoint Protection) which, even though was correctly uninstalled, has not been completely removed. After running cleanup tool (CleanWipe), the server miraculously stopped giving BSOD after reboot. Can AV software interfere with disk subsystem drivers somehow?

Thanks
Michael