There's an MS knowledgebase article on this, although many have followed it
and still failed. The issue here is hardware. If the hardware is
different -different chipset or different RAID controller- then you're going
to have problems. You should take a full backup of all necessary drives
(partitions) whereby applications are installed. Data isn't as important.
But if you;ve installed an application on the D drive you will need a backup
of that too. You'll also need to duplicate the disk setup to restore the
data to. In this case, I would only create a C drive, restore C, reboot and
then look at doing D, etc.
If you do take this route, persevere. It may not work first time.
Another approach is to promote the test server in the live domain, allow
replication, and then switch off and move to your test lab. Then, in the
live environment you will need to perform a metadata cleanup using ntdsutil.
You can then seize the roles on the test machine and add as many other
domain controllers to it. The only important thing here (and in all
scenarios) is that the test network and the live one are separate. They
cannot be able to communicate.
Another solution, one that often causes controversy, is to take an image of
the DC. Again, this can only be done if the imaged version never, ever
loads on the same network (network, not subnet) as the original. If you
just restore the image to a test box on a separate, discreet network then
you will be fine.
--
Paul Williams
http://www.msresource.net/
http://forums.msresource.net/
I want to backup my current directory info so I and dump it onto another
server to put in the test enviroment.
How do I go about doing this?
