What is your disaster recovery plan for your AD server?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sam Lai
  • Start date Start date
S

Sam Lai

Hello all,

Just wondering what you use/do when a disaster strikes your AD server? I
currently have BackupExec 8.6 doing a full backup on the weekends(which
includes the System State) and incrementals during the weekdays.
Is that enough if my AD server dies?
1)Fix the hardware(if the drive dies)
2)Install the OS(WinServer 2000)
3)Install the Patches
4)Install The BackupExec agents
5)and do a full recovery?

Please advise!

--Sam--
 
Sam said:
Hello all,

Just wondering what you use/do when a disaster strikes your AD
server? I currently have BackupExec 8.6 doing a full backup on the
weekends(which includes the System State) and incrementals during the
weekdays.
Is that enough if my AD server dies?
1)Fix the hardware(if the drive dies)
2)Install the OS(WinServer 2000)
3)Install the Patches
4)Install The BackupExec agents
5)and do a full recovery?

Please advise!
Click to expand...
Sounds reasonable , although that would result in some downtime.

If you had a second domain controller on your network then you would still
be able to authenticate users etc while you fix the dead server


--
Alex

"I laugh in the face of danger"

"Then I hide until it goes away"

www.drzoidberg.co.uk
 
Make sure that your backup domain controller is a catalog
server so your users can authenticate.

RSM
 
If possible you should add a second server for redundancy. Then when your
original server fails you can reinstall AD by the dcpromo method instead of
restoring from a backup.
 
Yes, I do have a secondary domain controller. And I made sure that it is
also a catalog server, because my "main" domain controller went down, and my
users could not authenticate, found out it was because the secondary was not
a catalog server.

THanks guys!

--Sam--
 
One more thing,

As long as my BackupExec is backing up the AD server system state, that then
I should be fine then? Do I have to do anything special with the System
State?

--Sam--
 
Small point of order ... when people are saying "catalog server", are we
meaning a "DC that is marked a Global Catalog"? In the development team we
use GC as short hand, I've never seen "catalog server" bandied about ... ;)

Thanks,
BrettSh [MSFT AD Replication SDE]
 
I would tend to trust your secondary domain controller more than a restore
from your backup. It is more current, and may be more stable than the
machine that went down. Replicating your AD and promoting the re-built
server may also be faster than a tap restore.

To speed recovery, we keep a couple of spare windows 2k server boxes without
anything on them. They can be renamed, and have ADS (or SQL server or IIS )
put on them in no time.

You could do the same with an image of a patched win 2k server before you
put ADS on it.
 
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