Avamar: BMR: NIC Detection Fails with Uncommon Drivers in WINPE ISO

Attempting to restore a Windows Server VM using the Windows Disaster Recovery Wizard ISO fails.

In the Select NIC screen, the Avamar Disaster Recovery (DR) Wizard is unable to automatically detect the NIC driver of the target VM. This is due to the configured NIC belonging to an uncommon driver.

Browsing to the local vCenter datastore drive to select the *.inf network card driver does not load as it cannot find the specified path file.

Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) ISO files only include network drivers for well-known physical network card manufacturers such as Intel, Broadcom, and so forth. Virtual NIC drivers are not in the WinPE ISO and cannot be manually loaded from the Load Driver button.

Create a new customized Avamar Disaster Recovery ISO with nonstandard NIC drivers included. 

1. Download the original AvamarWindowsSystemRecover_xxxx.iso file to the desktop.
2.  Open the ISO with third-party tools such as NTLite.
3. Create a Folder on your computer named Driver. Copy the Driver files to that Folder. 
4. Copy the folder Driver to the root of the ISO. 
5. Save the ISO to the disk and give it a different name to avoid confusion.

Configure the target VM to load the newly customized Avamar DR ISO file during bootup.

When the Select NIC screen of the Avamar DR wizard appears, it displays an error that the NIC cannot be retrieved. 

Load the custom NIC driver from the ISO.

Follow the remaining steps in the Avamar Wizard to complete the Windows System State Restore procedure.