Re: How can I clone a copy of active directory from a domain controller to a new installed windows 2003 ?

That depends on your needs and your network setup.
You can use LDIFDE to clone accounts and groups and such. You could use
backup and restore to do this as long as the target is and will never see
the production network.
I'm personally a fan of using virtualization to introduce a new DC, shut it
down, and copy it to a separate isolated network where it can be cleaned up
and will exactly mirror the production environment. Then just turn the
virtual machine back on and it continues to work as advertised.

I prefer this method as it is an exact copy vs bits and piece. Backup and
restore work as well, although again, I prefer to restore to a virtual
environment for portability and ease of restoration. It's just that a lot of
the backup services out there would require my VM to be on the same network
as production and I'm not interested in that.


Al


"Tony Cheng" <sdasd@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ePdpQd9eFHA.2128@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I have an existing active directory for my production environment. And now
>I want to setup a development environment with the same setting as
>production environment. I want to copy the active directory on production
>environment and create a clone on development environment.
>
> How can I achrieve this ? Backup and restore system data would be ok ? the
> development environment is a fresh-installed windows 2003 .
>
> Thx so much
>
> Tony
>


.

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