Re: Disaster Recovery Site Restoring AD

You have to be careful in that copying the system state to a new site this
doesn't make much sense if you are looking to just walk in and start using
in the event of a failure. The AD db would not be continuously updated. If
you arelooking to just trial out to make sure all the hardware is available
for you to do system state restore in the event of a disaster then this
seems ok. I'm just not sure on what your ultimate goal is.

I have an article on how to build a Test Domain from your Production Domain.
It covers things you need to do to get things working.

http://www.pbbergs.com
Select articles and click on "Creating A Test Domain"

--
Paul Bergson MCT, MCSE, MCSA, Security+, CNE, CNA, CCA
http://www.pbbergs.com

Please no e-mails, any questions should be posted in the NewsGroup

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Andy" <Andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6CD59DE1-35B3-488E-AA53-BA0B2B9A99CD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We are in the process of setting up a DR site and want to duplicate our AD
at
the DR site. We are not going to be able to setup a replication to the
site
at this time so that isn't one of the options. We are running our domain
controllers on Win2K.

I was looking to see if anyone had an idea as to the best way to do this.

We have tried a couple of things but none of them seem to be the ideal way
of doing it.

1. We have rebuilt a new server off our domain with similar specs.
a. We have restored the System State of the main DC to it. This worked
somewhat. We were able to access the AD and view it but we weren't able to
modify it in any way.
b. We restored the entire backup of the main domain controller to the
rebuilt DR server. Again it sort of worked. We were able to boot into safe
mode for domain controllers and the server seemed like everything was
there
but it never viewed itself as domain controller. We were not able to
access
AD in any fashion.
2. The second approach we have taken in the past was to rebuild the DC
while
attached to our network and let the AD replicate to it. Once fully
replicated
we can take it off site and it should work fine as the DR DC.

The main problem with the second option is that removing it from the our
production domain never goes as well as I would like it. Plus I would
think
there should be an elegant way of creating a DR site with the same domain.

Any help or critique would be greatly appreciated.

--
Andy
Network Admin


.

Relevant Pages

  • Only Domain Controller Failed
    ... I have a system which was the only domain controller (and DNS server, ... I take a weekly system state backup. ... In order to restore, do I just do a regular Windows 2003 SP1 install ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)
  • Re: State backup
    ... Does it matter which server i.e. domain controller or gc server? ... > You don't need to specify SYSVOL; it's part of the System State. ... > the backup? ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory)
  • Re: DR question; should a full backup of domain controllers be done?
    ... however, System State does not backup any installed app/software on the server, so I would say: backup volume with windows dir AND system state ... a domain controller, and join it back to the domain (siezing/transferring ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)
  • Re: Domain Controller Disaster Recovery
    ... domain controller and also make sure it is a global catalog server. ... State backup it may not be necessary to transfer/seize the fsmo role holders ... >> I do backup the system state along with everything else using NTbackup ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.networking)
  • Re: Domain Controller
    ... ALL windows 2000+ computers have system state so this doesn't really mean ... you have or haven't promoted the server. ... > When i added the secound domain controller i wanted this one to be to be ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)