Big Hyper-V cockup - can I import VM's if I didn't export them?

[sidewinder]

Had a bit of a stupid moment, I've spent the last few days creating VM's, but needed to change the RAID array. So I backed up all the VHD's and the Virtual Machines folder, formatted and copied them back (however it was now drive D:/, not E:/)

As expected, Hyper-V couldnt find files to start the VM's, fine I thought, I'll just change the path in settings. This didn't work. So I stupidly deleted everything from Hyper-V, created all new VM's, and attached the old VHD's to them.

 

Now, because it's generated a new VM, it's added new network adapters etc, and even when I set settings to what they were before, they just are not working properly....they are screwed if you will. Just seems too risky to now use them for anything.

 

But, I have the original VHD's backed up at a state they were at yesterday, plus the Virtual Machines folder. Is there any way to import these, so they are exactly as they were before or do I need to start from scratch? I know you can't import them through Hyper-V manager but thought maybe there is a way?

 

(By the way, I now realise that you need to export then import VM's when doing something like this. I am an idiot for just assuming you could copy the files)

Edited July 22, 2011 by sidewinder

[strawberry]

What symptoms are they showing? If its networking it could be as simple as the MAC addresses.

 

Have a look at SCVMM, 180 day trial and very useful for twiddling with VM's. Will migrate VM's with ease.

[ChrisMiles]

I did this with one of our VMs once when I was setting up the system, I could not fix it. Even when I attached the VHD to a new VM it wouldn't work properly because all the virtual devices are different. Ended up having to rebuild it. Fortunately it was only 1 server. I hope someone else can help you avoid doing the same.

[sidewinder]

What symptoms are they showing? If its networking it could be as simple as the MAC addresses.

 

Have a look at SCVMM, 180 day trial and very useful for twiddling with VM's. Will migrate VM's with ease.

 

Well, when I'm pinging between servers it is coming back with IPv6 addresses, even though it is turned off? And Windows is showing the domain as "schoolname.local 2"

It might be nothing, but being that 2 of the servers I was creating were DC's and DNS servers, I'm reluctant to use them now.

 

Thankfully it isn't a huge amount of work to recreate, just time consuming (I hadn't started configuring Exchange, for example, and had only added a few users/computers) and it is only really those 2 that I'd done much work on.

 

I've actually got a licence for SCVMM, but just hadn't got round to installing it. I think I will now

[strawberry]

jsut out of interest do arp/a from the cmd, See if its resolving the right mac address.