Yes the system state should be sufficient to recover from a disaster. There are three types of disasters: 1) loss of one domain controller, 2) loss of all domain controllers and 3) deletion of part of your AD structure.
In the case of 1, no backup is needed. You only need to reinstall the OS and run DCPromo. If DCPromo fails, you will need to clean up Active Directory. This should not be necessary if you use the same computer name. For case 2, you will need to create a new machine with the same name and run DCPromo to create the domain. Then you will have to use NTDSUTIL to do an authorative restore. This will utilize your system state backup. For case 3, you will need to do an authorative restore using NTDSUTIL and only restore part of the AD tree. In all these cases, a system state backup will be sufficient. Did I miss anything? Are there any disasters with a domain controller that is not covered under these three cases? Dennis -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Desmond Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 9:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Domain Controller Backups Edwin, If you have a full backup fo the systems and just need to restore to the same hardware you won't have to actually rebuild the machine. This is technically enough, but in my opinion nto a wise move. --Brian -----Original Message----- From: Edwin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thu 7/29/2004 6:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: [ActiveDir] Domain Controller Backups I have a nightly backup performed on the domain controllers during the overnight hours. This backup only consists of the System State which is run on both DC's and is copied to a different server. Is the System State enough to consider backing up? Will this be enough information to recover from a disaster? List info : http://www.activedir.org/mail_list.htm List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/list_faq.htm List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
