Re: AD backup

A lot of things are "possible". In the case of a Domain controller, the best DR strategy is always to have a second DC. If you set it up properly (DNS, DHCP, GC, etc.), you will, at worst, have to seize the remaining FSMOs and continue until you can re-build the DC and add it back into the domain. Meanwhile, your users will, at worst experience a slower logon. This assumes that the workstations have both DCs in their DNS settings.

If money is tight for hardware, you can even use a decent workstation as a second DC until you can get better server-class hardware.

Regards,
Hank Arnold

Geoff Lane wrote:
"Manny Borges" <manny_borges@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:#$M9hgCXGHA.2268@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Using my 10-media strategy, I can thus retrieve system state images
from up
to 12 weeks ago (with granularity increasing with age).
Unfortunately, no. You can go back up to 60 days MAX unless you modify
the tombstone value for AD objects. See here: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=216993

Thanks.

Although I would have backups from the last five business days, and three preceding fridays, and one or two months within the default tombstone value, the article you quoted does give instructions to recreate a domain from older backups:

"If every server in the domain is destroyed, restore one server from an arbitrarily outdated backup, and replicate all other servers from the restored one."

The article then gives instructions on how to "fudge" the tombstone value. One of the tools used to do that is ADSI scripting - I have a nice ADSI VBS library, so that should not present too much of a problem!

That said, hopefully I won't ever need to restore from a system state backup older than a couple of weeks - so the 60-day tombstone value shouldn't be an issue.

Thanks again,

.

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