Converted VHD to IMG - Not HA compatible?

[neal.coffey]

Hello,

I have a pair of VHD files that I just converted to IMG for use with StarWind. Took basically all day yesterday to do (multiple terabytes). This morning I'm trying to set them up in StarWind as HA targets, and when I try it tells me that the image is not HA compatible.

How can I get an HA-compatible image out of the converter? I hate to think I need to lose another day to this...

I'm using a fresh install of StarWind 5.7 on Windows 2008 R2 SP1.

[Anatoly (staff)]

Hello Neal,

There is header within StarWind HA images, that our converter doesn`t creating, so you can use your image file for creting Basic Image target or as one of the Mirrors for Mirror device.

If you want to use HA you need to move all your data from this image file to HA compatible.

[neal.coffey]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure why this is the case with the converter, but I was able to work around it.

For anyone else who finds this topic, here is how got my data from the VHD into the Starwind HA target:

• Mount the VHD in Windows Disk Management (Server Manager -> Storage -> Disk Management -> Action menu -> Attach VHD). It will be given a drive letter like any other drive.
• Create the HA target in Starwind and wait for it to initialize.
• Use the Microsoft iSCSI initiator to mount the Starwind HA target as yet another drive in Windows.
• Copy the data from the VHD drive to the Starwind drive.
• Dismount/disconnect everything when done.

NOTE: If this VHD is shared storage for a HyperV cluster, this is not the right way to do it. Despite the same XML and VHD files being present in the same path, the HyperV Manager and SCVMM will lose track of them. I believe the correct thing to do is create the HA Starwind target, add it to the HyperV cluster shared storage, and migrate the data from within SCVMM. Haven't tested that, because I didn't need to do it for this project (they were all test machines so I just blew them away).

[anton (staff)]

Well... At the time you've did indeed find a workaround and we appreciate you publishing your work results here we do insist on a following scenario:

1) Convert plain image to StarWind acceptable IMG

and

2) Using StarWind to wrap HA header around IMG file making resulting one HA compatible

That's it