An administrator is performing a physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration of a legacy server to a new virtualization host. The migration tool successfully creates the virtual machine files, but when the administrator attempts to power on the VM, the guest operating system fails to load and displays an 'INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE' error. The original physical server used a dedicated hardware RAID controller. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this issue?
The virtual network interface card (vNIC) is not configured on the correct virtual LAN (VLAN).
The migrated OS is missing the necessary drivers for the virtual storage controller.
The CPU of the physical server is incompatible with the virtualization host's CPU.
The memory allocated to the virtual machine is insufficient for the operating system to boot.
The correct answer is that the migrated operating system is missing the necessary drivers for the virtual storage controller. The 'INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE' stop error specifically indicates that the Windows operating system cannot access the system partition during startup. In a P2V scenario, this commonly occurs because the OS is still configured with the drivers for the physical server's specific hardware RAID controller. When it boots in a virtual environment, it cannot find this hardware and lacks the drivers for the hypervisor's virtual storage controller (e.g., a virtual IDE or SCSI device), preventing it from accessing its boot disk.
An incorrect VLAN configuration on the vNIC would cause network connectivity issues, but it would not prevent the operating system from booting. A fundamental CPU incompatibility would likely prevent the VM from powering on at all, rather than causing a specific OS-level boot error. Insufficient memory might cause other types of system crashes or performance problems, but it is not the direct cause of an 'INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE' error.