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Issues With Symantec Recovery Disk

mthrall
Level 4

Hi,

 

I'm having serious problems with the symantec recovery disk.  We are using Symantec System Recovery R2 Management Solution.  PRevious to the R2 upgrade restores were tested using the downloaded recovery disk and everything worked fine now however I cant seem to get a test restore working.

 

I'm trying to a test restore on a Dell Poweredge 2850 which is running Server 2008 R2.  I've created so many recovery disks I'm going insane.  The first issue I experienced was that the 64bit recovery disk would not boot this server after testing this disk on other servers I logged a call with Symantec who got me to test the disk on a PC and it worked...

 

So I tried the 32bit disk and it boots properly andf I am able to get to the recovery utility.  So now the main issue I am experiencing is that when I try to do the restore the target drive is always coming us as Invalid.

 

At first I assumed thta this was because I had created the recovery disk on our management solution server which is a VM so the disk didnt contain the relevant drivers for the server so I went to the server and tried to edit the ISO, but because the server is running a 64 bit OS I cant edit the 32bit recovery disk ISO... I tried editing the 64bit ISO, but that still wont boot.

 

So next I installed a full version of Symantec system recovery on a Windows 8.1 PC with a different license meaning I didnt have to create the recover disk through the management solution.  Once again only the 32bit disk would boot the server and once again the target drive location comes up as invalid when I try to do the restore.

 

This time I ran the driver validation tool on the server and it came back as all drivers installed, but I still cant do a restore.  I still cant edit the iso because its a 64 bit server and 32bit ISO.  I've tried adding in the perc 4 raid driver once in the restore environment and that doesnt work.

 

So now I'm stuck, I cant work out if the problem is driver related, or because the server is built using MBR, but the restore file location is saved on a volume that is GPT.

21 REPLIES 21

TRaj
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Mthrall, 

A 32 bit ISO image can be used for a 32 bit server and a 64 bit can be used for 64 bit server.

Have you tried creating a 64 bit ISO for 64 bit server ?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

The first issue I experienced was that the 64bit recovery disk would not boot this server after testing this disk on other servers I logged a call with Symantec who got me to test the disk on a PC and it worked...

I would say that we need to figure out why the 64bit recovery disk is not working. You say that it would not boot, can you elaborate on this please? What exactly happened, any errors etc?

How much memory does the server have?

mthrall
Level 4

When attempting to boot from the 64bit ISO is starts loading the WinPE environment, so I can see the windows flag, but then after a few minutes a quick message pops up on screen that I've never been able to fully read, but the top line says something like server must restart and the server just reboots.

 

This particular server only has 4GB of RAM, its just an old test box we use for testing things like this.

This is not limited to this one old Dell server by the way.

 

I also tried this on a newish HP gen 8 blade server and the 64bit ISO crashed that too, but the 32bit ISO worked and that server has Server 2012 R2 on it.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

What generation is the 2850 server?

And can you please confirm the case number you had open with support?

mthrall
Level 4

Its a gen 8 Dell server.  The case number was 08256574   I closed it when I got the server booting with the 32bit ISO.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

I'm checking this here so will let you know what I find...

Are you able to contact Dell Support? If so, can you ask if the PowerEdge 2850 G8 supports booting from a 64bit version of WindowsPE 5.0 (this is the Windows 2012 R2/8.1 version of WinPE). Let me know if this is possible or not.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

In addition to this..... have you tried creating the x64 recovery disk on the same Windows 2008 R2 server where you are testing/attempting restore? If you can try this, please use the 'Typical' option when creating the recovery disk.

mthrall
Level 4

I cant create the recovery disk on the server because it is managed by management solution so the option to create a recovery disk is greyed out and I have to do it on the management solution. 

 

I could reinstall the software on the server using a standalone license so that I do get the create recovery disk option, but its not feasible to do this across our whole server estate...

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

I could reinstall the software on the server using a standalone license so that I do get the create recovery disk option, but its not feasible to do this across our whole server estate...

Yep, I understand that. But for the purpose of troubleshooting this particular server, can you give this a try?

mthrall
Level 4

Yeah no problem

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Thanks Marc. Let me know how you get on.

mthrall
Level 4

OK new iso built on the server itself.  Its a 64bit iso because the server is 2008 R2.  It gets further than any other disk, in the way that it doesnt restart the server, but after 30 minutes it still hasnt loaded into the recovery utility.

 

It looks like the 2850's dont support Server 2012R2, so I guess they dont support WinPE 5.0

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

I think only Dell can answer this. As mentioned earlier, are you able to contact Dell and check if this model supports 64bit WinPE 5.0?

mthrall
Level 4

OK I've tried with the disk created on the server itself.  This time is does not restart the server and will load the recovery environment.  However it takes about 10 hours to load.  I then tried recreating the iso without the fibre channel drivers so it didnt try to load all the volumes on the SAN, but its still taking hours to start the environment.

 

I'm still waiting on a reply from Dell regarding 64bit winpe 5

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

This sounds familiar to me. Maybe the following helps:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH142471

mthrall
Level 4

OK that worked Chris, booted up quick, only its still showing no disk present...

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

OK, progress then ...

Not sure what you mean by this: 'only its still showing no disk present...'

mthrall
Level 4

Well that was the original problem, I cant do a restore because the target drive (C:) is invalid.  When I check with diskpart is shows no disk present even though when I do the driver validation check it says all drivers for network and storage are there.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

So if diskpart does not show the disk, this suggests the relevant driver is not loaded in the recovery environment.

What storage controller is being used in this server?