How can I image a domain controller?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nick
  • Start date Start date
N

Nick

I am trying to find a program that will allow me to image
my DCs. Ghost will create an image fine, but when I
restore from that image I can't loggin to the server.
Says to boot into Directory Services Safe mode. But when
I login it logs me back out. Is there a work around for
this to make Ghost work, or another program that works
better?

Thanks.
 
you need arc serve to backup your server for Disaster Recovery. You can
take the backup then create a set of bootdisk. You can format the harddrive
or put another harddrive in and boot off the floppy disks and it will
restore the backup completely.

HTH

Paul
 
That's fine, but it seems funny that restoring a Ghost image to the same
hardware won't work..... That's the whole point of Ghost.... I'd like to
understand why it won't work for him....

It almost makes no sense, though to image a DC. Ordinarily, you won't image
it often, so a restored image can be old, maybe old enough to get involved
with a tombstone effect. At the very least, the DC's AD and other stuff
would be out of date. This could present problems, especially if you have
multiple DC's.

I would, though, consider a Ghost image as a good idea for a DC if I made it
right before I made some server modifications (say I want to install SP4
onto W2K) and want to recover if it produces problems.
 
I want to image it so I don't have to reinstall stuff all
day if it goes down. Plus I'd also like to restore the
image to a larger partition or HDs. My C: drive is
running out of space really fast. I've spent a lot of
time trying to get Ghost to work. It always gives me
problems, and has yet to work with the Domain controllers.
Works great for my other servers, just not the DC's.

It gets backed up to tape, using Backup exec. But to do a
full backup then restore, it requires you to install the
OS and Backup exec before restoring. Where if I could
restore an image and just restore the data from tape I'd
be back to functioning tons faster.

Thanks for the insight,
Nick
 
How would one upgrade HDs then? I want to take the
information and move it to larger HDs basically. I'm
running out of space, since service packs are eatting my
HD. So my intent was to Ghost the drives, put the new
ones in and restore to the new drives. I want to test
this but there is really no good way to do it, in which I
don't bring the restored drives into the domain.

Nick
 
If you will be running on the same hardware besides the drive, run a backup
of the system state, C, and other partitions.
Install Windows on the new drive and restore the backups.
You can always unplug it from the network while doing the restore to ensure
the machine reboots ok.
Obviously you will see a couple of error messages about replication since
the NIC is disconnected but most things should function properly.

You can always demote the machine, either build a new one, or backup and
restore on the new hard drive, then repromote the machine to a DC.
 
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