Problem restoring from backup

[Steve]

I have 2 DCs in a cluster. One DC (the active part of the
cluster and the PDC at the time) suffered a hardware
failure requiring new PSU, motherboard & raid controller
to get it working. The cluster flipped over OK and no one
even noticed.

The server has now been repaired and W2KAS reinstalled.
When I restore from either Veritas or NTBackup files I get
errors similar to this -

Veritas:
Connection to the restore target has been lost. Operation
aborted. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Access denied to file
\Registry\default. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Error writing file data. ^ ^
^ ^ ^ Access denied to file \Registry\SAM. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Error
writing file data. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Access denied to file
\Registry\SECURITY

NTBackup:

Unable to restore "File Attributes Security" for file
default
Unable to restore "File Attributes Security" for file SAM
Unable to restore "File Attributes Security" for file
SECURITY
Unable to restore "File Attributes

Rebooting causes a BSOD with a STOP 0x00000050 error.


The Veritas site says: 'These errors usually occur during
a complete disaster recovery. Because the Active Directory
database was installed on one partition and the Active
Directory log files were installed to a different
partition, the system was not rebuilt in the same fashion.
In order to restore Active Directory, the partitions need
to be recreated identically to their original layout.'

There are only two HDs, raided as before the backup, no
new partitions. Anyone have any ideas?

TIA

 

[Simon Geary]

I think the best idea would be to remove your domain controllers from the
cluster altogether. Active Directory is not cluster aware in the MSCS sense
and does not even need to be in a cluster as it has built in redundancy
features of its own.

When installing a new DC after a hardware failure where there is another DC
on line the preferred procedure would be to run dcpromo and allow AD
replication to reinstall Active Directory. You shouldn't need to reinstall
from backup unless you had other files on the DC you need to recover. You
shouldn't need to do a System State backup.

 

[Steve]

This rather begs the question though. This week I have had
3 servers of 9 down with hardware problems. If both DCs
had been involved, rather than the one, the restore from
tape would have been essential. Surely the recommended
solution isn't to add all objects manually. AD isn't
running as a clustered service, just running on a server
that is part of a cluster.