Disaster Recovery Planning

[Neil B]

I am in need of some advice on putting together a disaster recovery
plan for a win2k network. The network currently consists of 3 Windows
2000 domain controllers connected to each other via point to point
T1's. We have a 4th server that we are planning to use for recovery
in the event of a hardware failure on any of the other 3. Since there
are hardware differences a full system restore is not a possiblity as
far as I know.

My origonal plan was to join the new server into active directory with
the same name as the "failed" server. In testing this plan out it
didn't seem to work due to being unable to run a dcpromo to demote the
failed server. This also seemed to cause a problem because the
"failed" pc although not a GC did have the other FSMO roles. How do
these roles come into play during the restore process (i.e. what if
the failed machine was the GC or PDC Emulator etc.)?

My next plan was to restore the sysvol onto the test server and bring
it up into the network. In trying this the recovery server was unable
to boot into windows completely.

In short I'm looking for the best/easiest way to accomplish a test
restore for each of our 3 server onto the test hardware.

Thanks a million,

Neil

 

[Paul McGuire]

Build the test server with w2k server. then restore the system state from
the real servers. W2k file protection will protect you from overwriting
important file that would cause you not to reboot. You may have to do this
in Directory restore mode. Give this a shot. i know it works for IIS.

Hope this helps

Paul McGuire