Hot dog! I get to help somebody for a change, instead of mooching off all the intelligent folks here.
We have Acronis TrueImage installed on a number of servers and have used it successfully. However, it WILL NOT back up and restore a DC. Read here to find out why: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=96564 And, giving credit where credit is due, Jorge from this list put me in the right direction on his blog: http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/jorge/archive/2006/03/08/597.aspx If you read that, you'll see a reference to the MSKB article here: http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=875495 Bottom line is, you need to backup and restore a DC using an "active directory-aware" program, such as NTBackup. -- Larry Wahlers Concordia Technologies The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod MailTo:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Business Phone: (314) 996-1876 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brett Fernicola Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 7:19 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: I need some advice on a good Exchange Backup - Restore Solution. Hi, I have been looking for a good quick easy self automated backup solution for small exchange shops that I have been doing consulting work for. My goal is to find a product that can backup an Exchange Server completely including the OS state, System State, Exchange data and all files. I want this backup to be a complete working disk image that I could use to restore the server with in case of complete Hard Drive failure. I also want to be able to start these backups while the server is still Online and running in windows and processing email. Then eventually schedule all this to do a backup once a week thus not needing any admin intervention. So far I have tried Acronis, and it works great when used booted from a boot cd, but running Live from windows is not always pretty. I have the latest version and I've seen it completely lock windows. I also use bat files to shut down (netlogin, File Replication, and Exchange) before the backup is run. I also turn on VSS support and tell Acronis to do an entire C: Partition image backup to a file and to save it on an external HD. I dry run tested my backup and restore procedure by trying to restore a server to another extra identical HD I had lying around. After I restored the Exchange Server I tested it on, which is also an additional Domain Controller and Global Catalog, the system did boot but it had problems. In my event log I saw an error that said "Active Directory was restored using an unsorted method and in result the Netlogon Service was Stopped." So I checked Netlogon and sure enough it was stopped and will not start on a reboot. Now If I manually started netlogon and then ran a dcdiag everything seemed to check out fine. Email was working, Authentication was fine, OWA, and even SYSVOl replication was working smoothly. However if you reboot this server in its restored state it will not work until Netlogon is fired back up. So a simple bat file can fix this but should not be necessary. So my question I pose is how do I properly backup and restore a small Primary Domain Controller and small Exchange Server which is also an additional domain controller + Global catalog. How good is NTBACKUP, and what is the correct method of doing a backup and restore with a NTBACKUP image. Any thoughts, comments and software recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Brett Fernicola [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/read/?forum=exchange To subscribe: http://e-newsletters.internet.com/discussionlists.html/ To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with. _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/read/?forum=exchange To subscribe: http://e-newsletters.internet.com/discussionlists.html/ To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. Attn: Discussion List Management 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Please include the email address which you have been contacted with.
