Re: Saving and transferring AD information

Dana,

There is a lot going on here. So, let's take one thing at a time.

And, I might come across as a bit of a ***-head at times. Please do not
take it that way. Black and white does not quite do my words justice.
There is a smile and a grin involved...usually! You will know the
difference!

Okay, small environment, limited funds. Know all too much about that. The
majority of the clients that I handle are five to 15 workstations with one
Server that does everything: Active Directory, Exchange, SQL and a host of
applications. So, I know the feeling. I did not set them up; the company
for which I now work has inherited these customers. Did the former
consultant not know about Small Business Server? Anyway....

You really have several choices. If the server hardware is really old (say,
PIII-733 with 512MB of RAM and Ultra2 Hard Drives) then it might be time to
get new hardware. That all depends on how good you can sell the idea. It
really sounds like this hardware is about to die at any moment. Kinda
sounds like it already has (and then some!). How much does it cost for the
entire company to be down for three days? For one week? Get some new
hardware.

If new hardware is in the cards then I might simply recreate the domain.
However, you did not mention how many clients there are. If there are up to
35 clients then I would look hard at that idea. If there are more then I
might not.

If the new hardware option is on the table then sit on your current server
and use ldifde to create a .ldf file of all the user account objects. And
maybe the groups as well. You really did not mention how many users there
are and how many groups there are. I would do this as a safety new. We
will try to use the backup tape to restore the System State. However, on
different hardware it is a bit more involved. Please take a look at the
following: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=249694. The bad thing would
be that you would have to touch each system to join it to the new domain.
However, you could look into netdom to do this. netdom is part of the
Support Tools. If you are not familiar with the Support Tools then I might
suggest that you change that! ;-)

If the new hardware is not in the cards then I suggest that you do the
ldifde thing anyway. Just make sure to take the .ldf file that you create
an put it on a floppy of on a thumb drive and keep it someplace safe.
Because you know how things go: the Domain Controller crashes big time and
the tape back up has not worked for the last two weeks!

I would not suggest that you install a second Domain Controller into the
environment if things are as messed up as I think that they are. If DNS is
bad (and, have you run dcdiag /c /v against the Domain Controller to see
just what exactly is going on?) then this will probably not work.

To get an idea of what is going on please fun dcdiag /c /v against the
Domain Controller and look for 'fail', 'error' or 'warn'. This is what I
would do first.


--
Cary W. Shultz
Roanoke, VA 24012

"DanaK" <DanaK@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:12F54863-E815-404E-8017-F98B9664999D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ok, the inevitable has happened and, as usual, it never happens at the
best
time. My AD DC server OS (Server 2000, sp4) has given up the ghost today
when its UPS cratered and the server went down hard taking the DNS service
with it. For some time it's been limping along with it's Windows
Installer
service hopelessly corrupted, couldn't install the new version because you
need the Installer service to install the Installer, catch-22. I'm
assuming
that is why I can't run the install/upgrade program on my Server 2003 CD.
When I click on the "Install Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition" it
goes
to the Installation window and just stalls there. The Task Manager says
Windows Setup isn't responding.

I've asked several people but I need to know one last time - is it
impossible to preform a System restoration from a system backup tape to a
reinstalled W2K or W2K3 server installation? It's my understanding you
actually need a second backup server already in the domain to promote and
restore the AD information to for this to work. Since we're a small
operation we've never had the funds for a second backup server. Does this
mean we're stuck with a total reinstall? New domain, DNS, DHCP, user and
computer account information, etc., etc.?

Thanks,
Dana


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