Backup and Restore AD DC

[Guest]

Greetings,

Our network is based on Windows 2000 Domain.
Our Active Directory Domain Controller runs on an HP Proliant Server with
Windows 2000 Standard Server SP3. Our Windows 2000 Active Directory Domain
Controller needs to be backed up and restored at a different location on a
different hardware platform (on a Dell Server).

When we use the native/built-in Windows 2000 Backup and Restore, our Active
Directory cannot be restored completely due to hardware differences.
Even Microsoft states in its website that “There has been some testing with
restoring from different vendors, from Compaq computers to Dell computers or
vice versa, and they have gotten that to work on occasion, but that is not a
guarantee, it's not a guarantee that it's going to work.â€

Is there a third-party backup & restore software that can backup a Windows
2000 Active Directory Domain Controller and do bare-metal restore on a
completely different hardware configuration?

Thank you.

 

[Paul Bergson]

Have you looked at

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263532&Product=win2000

and this

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249694

 

[Guest]

Paul,

Thank you very much for the information, and yes, we have followed the
instructions on those 2 URLs you gave. However, the restore still could be
completed successfully.

 

[Guest]

If you are using 2003 you could promote another dc at the remote site. Down
the server on the old hardware and rename the server with the new hardware.


Paul

 

[Guest]

Paul,

Thanks for optional information.

If you are using 2003 you could promote another dc at the remote site. Down
the server on the old hardware and rename the server with the new hardware.


Paul

 

[Mike Leone]

Did you ever get this work? I can't even get it to work on similar hardware
(i.e., a Dell OptiPlex to a Dell Dimension).

My DNS won't start after the restore, saying it can't allocate an object. I
have cleaned up the metadata, tried to delete the replication partners,
deleted the other DCs (including using ADSIEdit to do so), but nothing seems
to work.

Restoring a DC to different hardware never seems to come up properly, even
following the 2 links below. Which bodes badly for Disaster Recovery,
since - like most people , I expect - my newly re-built DC will almost
certainly be on different hardware than the hardware I have now.