Symantec System Recovery 2013 - restore to new VM
We're running Symantec System Recovery 2013 on Windows Server 2012. It's scheduled to create recovery point sets with a "full" backup once a week, then "incremental" ones in between. That's all working fine, and we can restore individual files from the backups with no problems.
However, we'd also like this to work as a form of disaster recovery, in that if the building were to burn down, we'd like to be able to restore an offsite copy of the latest recovery point to a new virtual machine at a datacentre. I've been testing this process by creating a new VM, and booting with the Symantec Recovery DVD to perform the restore. Although the restore process runs to completion, there seems to be a problem with drivers, and the newly-created VM doesn't boot properly to Windows. The "Restore Anywhere" feature of Symantec System Recovery 2013 is definitely enabled.
The newly-created VM gets most of the way through the initial boot process but, before the logon screen is reached, an alert box appears "Windows Setup could not configure Windows to run on this computer's hardware". I'm using the latest version of Oracle Virtualbox for the VM host, with default virtual hardware, which normally Windows Server 2012 supports with no problems. I've also tried using a virtual IDE drive or virtual SCSI drive for my VM, instead of the default SATA virtual hardware. The original physical server has an Fujitsu SAS 6Gb/s RAID 5/6 512MB (D2616) Adapter and a RAID-5 array.
I've also tried using the feature built in to Symantec System Recovery which allows the conversion of the latest recovery point to a VHD file. I've tried the file it creates both with Virtualbox and with "proper" Hyper-V running under Windows Server 2012 R2, and in both cases I get the same error message when the VM boots.
I'm not clear why this isn't working - any ideas, please? I'm assuming it's something to do with mass storage drivers, but perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree?
The issue isn't resolved. I'm still unsure whether Symantec Tech. Support will allow us to open a support case regarding this without giving them some money first. They require proof of purchase, but it's more complicated than it might be because it's not separately itemised on the invoice.
The forum moderators are keen to close this thread, so I'll do that for now, and open a new, identical thread if it transpires that we're unable to open a support case.
