VMWare ESXi 6.7
Two 2012R2 DCs. DC1 and DC2.
DC1 is the Operations Master RID, PDC and Infrastructure
DC1 is not booting up properly. It hangs at spinning dots "Please Wait"
I'm able to boot into Safe Mode.
DC2 is fine. Have not tried to boot. Users are authenticating through DC2.
What changed:
Upgraded from ESXi 6.0 to 6.7 latest version. This past Monday, 12/30.
Enabled GPO System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing and signing.
Upgraded VMTools but not the compatibility, stayed at 6.0
Attempted to install the VMXNET3 nic instead of E1000. Server went bananas, so I reverted changes. Server still would not boot.
Restored server from last night's backup through Veeam
DC1 will only boot with this Please Wait. Unless I cut it short and boot into safe mode.
What am I missing?
You should definitely be using VMXNet3 NIC instead of E1000. I'm not sure if this is causing your problems, but it could certainly contribute. What exactly happened when the server "went bananas"? After adding the new virtual NIC, did you make sure that you configured it to have the original IP address, DNS settings, etc., so that the DC could function normally?
You may also want or need to upgrade the virtual machine version on the servers so that it is up to the current version for 6.7, depending on what version they were on before the upgrade.