Re: Paul Bergson

> In the original post Paul mentioned taking a backup, demoting the DC, and
> then restoring it in the test environment. That's why I wanted to know his
> method for backing up. I would have thought using imaging software would
> be the easiest method of doing this?

Sorry. I didn't read the original post. I was under the impression you
wanted to promote into the live environment and then move to the dev
environment - this way you don't have to backup anything and HAVE to clean
up the remaining replication metadata, DNS entries, etc.

If you wanted to restore a backup, you don't promote anything. You simply
build a server with the same name, install your backup application (if
necessary), boot into Directory Services Restore Mode and restore the entire
C drive, system state and the other drives if your DIT is on another volume.
This method doesn't affect the live environment in any way, but you will
still need to do some cleanup in the dev as AD will try and replicate with
all of the other DCs it knows about.


> My thoughts were to build a 2000 server, add it to the domain, promote it
> to a DC, add dns (as Paul recommends), take a backup (image hdd?), demote
> (do I have to do anything else besides delete the account from active
> directory
once demoted?), restart and restore from image in test environment, seize
fsmo roles, use for testing purposes. Does this sound reasonable?

That is an amalgamation of both methods - which are quite different. I
would not bother with the backup. I would simply shutdown the DC and move
it (physically) to the dev network. I would then perform the cleanup
process (mentioned in that aforementioned KB) to remove all traces of the DC
that was promoted but now no longer exists.

Does that help?

--
Paul Williams
Microsoft MVP - Windows Server - Directory Services
http://www.msresource.net | http://forums.msresource.net


.

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