Duplicate environment of AD

[Guest]

I currently have a testing environment where I have an exact copy of my live
environment except for a domain controller that is offsite.

I have the same hardware, so I was able to break the hardware mirror on my 3
domain controllers and re-sync the drives in my testing environment.

I need to keep the Active Directory up to date in my testing environment,
but I don't want to play with my mirrored drives every time. I want to
update the AD every 50 days before items become tombstone.

My question is, if I do a system state backup on my primary domain
controller on the live network and then do an authoritative restore in my
testing environment, would this update my Active directory?


Or is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks

Pierre

 

[Paul Bergson]

This will work but any changes you make in the test environment will be lost
as well as any registry changes (Software installed reliant on ad) as well.

--

 

[Denis Wong @ Hong Kong]

Hi Pierre,

Yes, this would be a convenient approach.

For more info, pls read.


Useful shelf life of a system-state backup of Active Directory
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q216993/

br,
Denis