Failed Inplace to Win Server 2022 ReFS upgraded
Posted by Crafty-Sort2697@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 8 comments
Hi all,
we tried to inplace a Hardware Server from 2016 to 2022 and the upgrade failed. After a restore we saw that the Volumes are RAW, These Volume are formattet in ReFS and the Upgrade already updated the to ReFS 3.7. That means that Windows Server 2016 cant read them. The Inplace Upgrade fails at every try so we would like to atleast get the Server running on 2026 again.
Is there a way to install some kind of driver to get the Server 2016 to read the ReFS 3.7 Volumes?
Any help is appreciated.
Cheers
VexedTruly@reddit
I had similar. There are known issues with 2022 inplace upgrades and refs. If I remember correctly I marked the refs disk offline or removed them from the array and that allowed the OS upgrade to go through. I can’t remember whether installing available 2022 updates and marking the disk online again after the upgrade was enough to recover the content or whether I had to follow the articles from Veeam and/or MS for recovery.
Crafty-Sort2697@reddit (OP)
Yeah, i do know now. There is also a Reg Key for disabling the Upgrade of the Volumes. Every day a new lesson i guess 😂
xqwizard@reddit
What’s the backup product? If it’s Veeam just make sure you have a config backup, blow away the OS, install Server 2022, then veeam then restore your config file?
woodburyman@reddit
This. I replaced our servers late last year and did the same thing. Except I went Server 2025. FYI Server 2025 works fine with Veeam now. Early on iSCSI had issues on Server 2025 under high I/O but it got fixed with a CSU in February or so.
Borgquite@reddit
I don’t believe there is a supported way to do this. I presume you have no backups made prior to the failed in-place upgrade?
You could try replacing refs.sys from Server 2022 into your Server 2016 although this would be unsupported. Otherwise you may need to mount the volumes into a new install of Server 2022, and salvage what you can.
And remember to take backups before an in-place upgrade next time…
Crafty-Sort2697@reddit (OP)
it is one of our Backup Server and the volume are a litte bit too big to "copy" elswere. We have a Backup of the Server itself so we can go back to 16.
Yes it would have been better to go 16, 19, 22 but all servers we inplaced in the last weeks went straigt from 16 to 22 or even 25 without a Problem, so i havebt seen a issue with that (so much to that..\^\^)
I will check into the refs.sys, thank you for that idea.
Borgquite@reddit
Ah, that’s more understandable. If it’s backups then hopefully you won’t lose anything anyway. You may need to fight with the Windows File Protection to replace refs.sys. There is a registry key to disable it somewhere, but personally I would try mounting the system volume in another computer and replacing refs.sys in both the main location, and dllcache (after taking a copy of the original refs.sys from both locations, of course). Good luck!
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/description-of-the-windows-file-protection-feature-db28f515-6512-63d1-6178-982ed2022ffb
unavoidablefate@reddit
You probably should have stepped to 2019 before going to 2022.
But
If the partitions are formatted incorrectly vs the backups, then you need to fix the partitions first manually. Since you're doing a restore, delete and re-create the partitions to spec.
Also wtf is server 2026? 😂 I'm sure you meant 2016. Just checking hahaha.