going to AD was something decided by the higher ups to merge my corp and our sister corp into a smealess whole. The sister corp already had AD in place and they own the root. our IT depts. don't exactly communicate or relate to each other very well :) i'm sure its like that in alot of places. before comming here, I was in a Netware 6.0 enviorment and feel that directory is much more mature in terms of configurabilty and satisfying all the business needs that AD does. i exagerrated when i said i would move from AD to NDS. its just that when my corp wants to do DR testing for our domain and we go away to the dr site and want to recreate most of our infrastructure from back up, etc, its fursttrating to have to go to our sister corp IT dept and ask them for the Domain admin or enterpris admin password or a copy of thier root role holding master dc on a laptop or vmware just to practise recovery of our domain and exchange2k. it seems MS made it so you can't recover a child domain without connectivity to the root. that kinda stinks. i can understand losing some functionality but still be up and running. however to make it impossible to get up at all without the root fsmo dc is I think something that needs to be addressed. in MS's mind, all thier DR whitepapers assume you either lost a dc or 2 and want to recover them OR you lost the entire forest. they really don't address losing a child domain. Ad is supposed to be a enterprise directory where most enterprises span the globe and have multiple sister corps or corps they've merged with or aquired. these corps have thier own domains and IT depts. If one corp goes down, in MS's implementation, this corp has to get in touch with the IT dept of the root, be allowed high access to the forest OR have someone from that other IT dept free enough to come down for security reasons and log in himself as enterprise admin. also some physical connectivity is implied... All in the middel of a disaster OR just to test and practice for said disaster. thats asking for alot of any large company. MS should know how unrealistic this is more than anyone. my pointless two cents. thanks for reading and replying before
-----Original Message-----
From: Mulnick, Al [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thu 3/25/2004 10:20 AM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Cc:
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
Just out of curiousity, why did you deploy a forest root structure? Why
didn't you go with a single domain structure?
Otherwise, Who manages the schema without the root? Who manages the domain
naming master in your environment (both are at the root, right?) Who handles your
time synch? Who holds the Enterprise Administrator permissions?
from:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/technologies/activedirectory/support/adrecov.mspx
"Important: Backup data from a DC can only be used to restore that DC. You
cannot use a backup of one DC to restore another. To have your environment completely
backed up, you would need to have a backup of every domain controller. This should be
kept in mind while developing your backup strategy. The minimum requirement should be
to backup all the OM role holders and GCs. Also the first domain controller in the
root domain should always be backed up."
"Note: Because this procedure requires modifying the configuration naming
context, it requires Enterprise Administrator permissions."
Switching to something that works for you is certainly an understandable path
to take but only if you understand that product better AND it solves your issues. IT
is not about technology for technology sake it's about solving your business issues.
If you need something else to make that happen, I'd be the first to tell you to go do
it.
This thread comes across as sticker shock as you go to do this. This is also
why you want to practice this stuff all the time; that way you are not surprised at
0200 when everything is down.
Al
_____
From: Kern, Tom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 5:01 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
i don't need the schema or domain naming roles to restore my domain. i have
all the other roles.
yet it still has issues with finding a gc or replicating within a domain.
why?
this is a fundemental design flaw of AD. It boggles the mind. If in a real
disaster or even a test, MS expects you to have connectivity to your root domain
wherever it may be(on the other side of the world) AND access to that domains Admin
passwords or accounts OR enterprise admin just to get up and running, then they are
clearly not living in this world.
AD was meant for the enterprise where a corp could have offices and domains
all over the world. if in the event of disaster, we have to worry about isdn or T1
lines to the root and overcome all the politics of diff IT depts and security to beg
for the enterprise password(even just for a simple test) JUST to get functional(not
add or delete domains or modify the schema), then i'm ready to ditch AD for NDS or
something more realistic.
what other reason could I have to connect to the root? what other secrets does
it hold aside from the 2 roles?
does anyone know?
why doesn't MS tell you these things in their DR documentation? is it so
obivious?
why is connectivity to the root never mentioned as key?
am i the idiot?
i'm willing to accept that, but what else does the root dc hold in terms of AD
functionality?
thank you for all your help so far.
-----Original Message-----
From: Mulnick, Al [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wed 3/24/2004 4:28 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Cc:
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
No, you need the root domain as it holds some of the roles etc.
In order for this to work, you need to restore the root domain as
well. I've found that doing this with a virtual server is sometimes easier but that
just saves on hardware requirements.
Al
_____
From: Kern, Tom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 3:23 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
yes.
a quick question- can one restore an entire child domain without
connectivity to the root domain?
-----Original Message-----
From: Anderson Santos Patricio [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wed 3/24/2004 2:58 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc:
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
You Zones is setting for Dynamic Updates = YES???
_____
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Kern, Tom
Sent: quarta-feira, 24 de marÃo de 2004 16:47
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
restarting netlogon or registerdns does not work.
where is this copy of the root zone in my dns server. i don't
think i have it by default. i had to transfer it on my dns server back home.
also if i had it, wouldnt creating a AD intergrated dns server
on my test DC also have it?
finally, when dc's replicate, do they look each other up in a
gc?
i never had any gc srv records in my local domain zone, only
in the root. is this normal?
thanks for your reply
-----Original Message-----
From: Anderson Santos Patricio [mailto:[EMAIL
PROTECTED]
Sent: Wed 3/24/2004 2:16 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc:
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
Hi Tom,
All register of AD Zones can recover with two comand:
restart netlogon service or ipconfig /registerdns
and all workstation will update your register in dns,
or dhcp will ..
In Windows 2000 is interesting you have a secondary
zone of your root in your local dns server,
In Windows 2003 you can set dns zone to level Forest
then this zone is replicated for all domain controller in the forest.
Thanks for advanced.
Anderson Patricio - Analista de Suporte
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <blocked::mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer on 2003/2000
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator on 2003/2000
Red Hat Certified Technician
_____
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Kern, Tom
Sent: quarta-feira, 24 de marÃo de 2004 16:03
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
i also get a "all gc's are down" error.
gc records are just registered in the root domain, i
assume. i only have a dns for my domain.
also dcdiag output says "the server is not responding
to directory service requests" though it holds a copy of AD.
how can i get around this? do i need a copy of the
root dns zone? how can i get this? can i export it to a text file and import it into
my dns server? can i somehow pull it from the config container in AD without being
connected to the root of the tree?
is this the cause of my woes?
it would be insane on MS's part to demand connectivity
to the root of the forest when restoring or doing DR on AD.
what did i screw up?
Thanks again for any help
-----Original Message-----
From: Kern, Tom
Sent: Wed 3/24/2004 1:34 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc:
Subject: [ActiveDir] disaster recovery
I just restored AD. I had a test laptop,
pulled it off the network, ran ntdsutil, seized all 3 roles,ran metadata cleanup and
removed all my old dc's. deleted them with adsiedit and all dns records as well.
then at the DR site, i set up new servers with
the same names as the old one's, ran dcpromo. however, the new servers get
dnslookup/rpc errors when i try to force a replication.
also, they fail a dcdiag because the guid dns
name is not present and the server "fails a directory request"
Also the srv records for kerberos and kpasswd
do not appear in dns for my domain.
The test laptop had an AD intergrated dns zone
pulled directly from my real network. However, it just has the zone for my domain, not
the forest root.
do i need this record as well to promote DC's.
I'm not connected to the forest anyway, but should i have the forest root records too.
what am i doing wrong?
thanks
.+wYØP×.+j joryIV+v*
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