Migrating Drive with OS from ML350gen9 To ML350gen8

[Rbarden]

I have a running production server based on an ML350gen9 platform running Server2012. I'd like to take the drive mirror out and plug it into my bench test server, which is an ML350gen8. This is all in the interest of doing an OS upgrade simulation on the bench before performing it on the actual production server.

Obviously, I am having trouble getting the gen8 to boot from the gen9's drive, although I can see the entire contents (partitions, files, etc...) of the drive when I boot to the command prompt. 

What am I missing ? I expected Windows might be a little upset, but hoped that I'd at least get it to boot. No boot device available ? That was unexpected...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

[support_s]

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[Rbarden]

Thank you for the suggestion, but I'm not even sure what to do with it. 

I was really hoping to just pull the mirror drive from the gen9 server, and plug it into the gen 8 server...

[Richard75]

Just a few questions that comes in mind

Is the boot order correct 

Is it the same array controller or do you need additional drivers

[Rbarden]

Yes, I've verified the boot order, and that the volume is set to boot in the Array Manager. The controllers are slightly different, a 440 in the gen9 and a 420 in the gen8, but I don't think it is a driver issue, because I can see the drive, partitions, and all the data from the repair console boot off of a Windows server DVD.

I may not have cleared the array data before putting in the drive, maybe that screwed it up ? 

I am going to pull a fresh mirror and try again, as well as bundling the server up into a VXD as a plan B today. Someone stop me before I mess up another mirror if I am missing something !

Thanks !

[Rbarden · Accepted solution]

I am surprised that no one picked up on the fact that the ML350 gen8 is not capable of UEFI boot. MBR only. ML350 gen9 was the first generation to support UEFI.  So... a UEFI disk from the ML350 gen9 machine wouldn't be bootable in the gen8. I manually converted the disk to MBR, and the server boots fine. 

My bench experiment was a success, the 2012 server (once the boot was converted) was successfully upgraded to 2019 Server, and the existing apps all worked when it was done. On the bench... Now to upgrade the production server onsite.