AD & DC Recovery, Single DC

[Bob Felton]

There are several MSKB articles dealing with recovery of Windows 2000
using NTBackup. When I read each, I get confused as to which is the
correct one to use for my situation: single DC running AD on a LAN
with a single domain (not running Exchange Server). Which of the
articles should I use to for AD & DC recovery. Tnx!

 

[David Adner]

Are you asking for a hypothetical scenario or something you're actually
experiencing? For hypothetical, one of the first rules of AD is to
always have at least 2 DC's for simple fault tolerance. This way, if
one fails, your Domain doesn't go down with it. If you only have 1 DC
and you have to rebuild it, for example, you're effectively starting
over from scratch.

 

[David Pharr [MSFT]]

It depends on what articles you're looking at, but to recover a single
domain with a single DC you will need to have a backup of the System State
of that DC. The following article outlines this procedure:

240363 HOW TO: Use the Backup Program to Back Up and Restore the System
State
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=240363

You need to test that the backups are good from time to time to ensure that
you can recover your DC (and hence your AD domain) in the event of failure.
If you have the option, you should add a second DC if possible for fault
tolerance.

David Pharr, (e-mail address removed)

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--------------------
| From: (e-mail address removed) (Bob Felton)
| Subject: AD & DC Recovery, Single DC
| Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 00:19:26 GMT
| Organization: Carlsbad Technology Group
| Message-ID: <[email protected]>
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|
| There are several MSKB articles dealing with recovery of Windows 2000
| using NTBackup. When I read each, I get confused as to which is the
| correct one to use for my situation: single DC running AD on a LAN
| with a single domain (not running Exchange Server). Which of the
| articles should I use to for AD & DC recovery. Tnx!
| --
| Bob Felton
|
|

 

[Bob Felton]

Actually, I need to move the system drive of the server from the drive
it presently resides on to a newly installed RAID 5 drive. Once the
transfer is complete, the RAID 5 drive will become the system drive.
I was going to approach the transfer as if the DC died and rebuild it
from a system state backup onto the new RAID 5 drive. After rereading
the several MSKB articles, I believe what I need to do is:

1. Reinstall Windows 2000 Server onto the RAID 5 drive, with the
computer as a member of a workgroup
2. Reboot, going into AD Restore mode (F8 key)
3. Do a Primary restore from the system state backup
4. Reboot and test the system

I plan on placing the system state backup onto an external USB
connected hard drive, which will be drive F: at time of backup. My
guess is the USB drive will not be assigned drive F: at time of
restore since I will have the two existing hard drives out of the
system. So, I do plan on reassigning the drive as F: prior to doing
the restore, just in case that matters.

I understand that there should be another DC on the LAN for best
security. However, my client can not afford another system at this
time. So, there is only the one. The LAN is small: 1-Windows 2000
Server; 1-Windows XP Pro machine running as an email and FTP server;
and 15 Windows XP Pro workstations.

Any comments on my approach? Tnx!

 

[Bob Felton]

Thanks! That's one of the articles I did print out. Please see my
response to David Adner for the specifics on what I need to do.
Thanks, again.

 

[David Adner]

If you have a spare PC, you can install 2000 Server onto it and
temporarily make it a DC. That will provide much easier fault tolerance
than hoping your backup/restore plan works. If you do decide on this
route, there are a few things you need to be aware of, like FSMO
holders, GC's, DNS, etc.

You don't say if this disk subsystem change will also involve a
different mass storage device driver. If it doesn't, you could Ghost
the current system to your USB backup disk, swap the disk config, then
restore the Ghost image. As long as the drivers are all the same, it
should boot up fine.

 

[Bob Felton]

Unfortunately, no spare PC and budget doesn't allow purchase of
another copy of W2K Server.

Yes, the RAID system (Adaptec 2100S controller) does have (require?) a
Windows driver. It would get installed during the install of W2KS
onto it (workgroup mode) prior to the AD restore.

At first I was going to use an image transfer method, thinking that
upon startup W2KS would detect the new disk system and install support
for same, including asking for the driver disk. This was two weekends
ago. For some reason I don't recall, I didn't get to the point of
attempting putting the image onto the RAID drive. Needing to increase
the system partition size to install a new application, I decided to
replace the current system disk (18GB with 4GB system partition) with
a new 73GB disk (one that was going to be the hot spare in the RAID
array). I didn't use Ghost, but I did use Acronis MigrateEasy to
create an image and move it to the new disk. All seemed to work well
except upon restarting, W2KS issued an error saying to the effect it
couldn't start up properly and was going to use an older version (last
good version?). It then started up fine. However, during the week
after the system became very unstable and network printing was lost as
well as the ability for user Backup to log into the server. Last
Monday night I reinstalled the old system disk and the system has been
stable since.

What do I need to know/do regarding DNS, WINS, and DHCP. The server
is hosting those services. With respect to FSMO and GC, I have no
idea what they even are and no idea if the server is hosting those
services.

FYI, I am self-taught when it comes to W2KS administration. I was the
one that originally installed the server (3 years ago) and have
maintained it since. I did install a RAID array into a NetWare 4.x
server 5 years ago. That went much smoother than the current W2KS
attempts.

Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Tnx!