Upgrading virtual hardware in ESX 4.x may cause Windows 2008 disks to go offline

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Upgrading virtual hardware in ESX 4.x may cause Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 disks to go offline.
• Upgrading virtual hardware from version 4 to version 7 may cause Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 disks to go offline.
• Upgrading virtual hardware from version 7 to version 8 may cause Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 disks to go offline.
• Creating a new virtual machine on hardware version 7 may cause Windows 2008 or Windows 2008 R2 disks to go offline.
• Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller virtual machines immediately experience a blue diagnostic screen on boot after the upgrade of virtual hardware.
• The blue diagnostic screen contains the message:
  
  0xC00002E2 The system could not find the file specified

Note: The first disk (C: drive) is not affected. Any additional disks may be affected and show marked as Offline within Disk Management.

Environment

VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Resolution

The default SAN Policy on Windows Enterprise is to not automount SAN disks, resulting in the disks being shown as offline. In comparison for Windows Standard Edition, the SAN Policy is online.

This can be resolved by changing the SAN Automount Policy on the system. See the Microsoft article Knowledge Base article 973834 to change the SAN Policy to online.

The SAN policy is defined within the VDS environment of the system and is represented by the following values:

• VDS_SP_UNKNOWN = 0x0
• VDS_SP_ONLINE = 0x1
• VDS_SP_OFFLINE_SHARED = 0x2
• VDS_SP_OFFLINE = 0x3

For more information, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb525577%28VS.85%29.aspx.

On Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, the default SAN policy is VDS_SP_OFFLINE_SHARED. On all other Windows Server 2008 editions, the default SAN policy is VDS_SP_ONLINE.

To query current SAN policy from the command line, start DISKPART and issue a SAN command:

C:\>DISKPART.EXE
DISKPART> san
SAN Policy : Offline Shared

DISKPART> exit

The blue diagnostic screen occurs when you configure Active Directory to install logs on a second drive or partition and that partition is offline. To prevent the blue diagnostic screen, boot the virtual machine into Directory Services Restore Mode and set the disk online.

To set the disk to Online:

1. Log in to your system as an Administrator.
2. Click Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management.
3. Right-click the disk and choose Online.

Alternatively, you can also set the default SAN policy before the hardware upgrade. For more information, seeHow to change default SAN disk status from offline to online.

Note: The preceding link was correct as of January 8, 2013. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

Additional Information

ESX 4.x で仮想ハードウェアをアップグレードすると、Windows 2008 のディスクがオフラインになる場合がある
在 ESX 4.x 中升级虚拟硬件可能导致 Windows 2008 磁盘脱机