Backing up AD?

[Chiefcrowe]

just curious, what do you guys use to back up your domain contollers? (besides obviously having 2 or more?)

 

[XZeroII]

from what I understand, the backup is the second DC. Either that or image your OS drive. Sorry. If you come up with a better solution, let me know.

 

[stlcardinals]

I use DPM 2010 to backup but you still need to know the general guidelines for backup and restore. If you restore an old backup, you can really hose your AD.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727048.aspx

 

[Genx87]

nt backup will do a backup of your ad.
Other backup software will as well.

 

[imagoon]

Backup Exec.

 

[RebateMonger]

All of my clients have a single Domain Controller. Full System Backups are typically done nightly with NTBackup or Windows Server Backup or StorageCraft's Shadowprotect Server.

 

[stash]

from what I understand, the backup is the second DC. Either that or image your OS drive. Sorry. If you come up with a better solution, let me know.

Having a second DC is a great idea, but it isn't a replacement for a proper backup. A second DC won't help you if an OU gets deleted, for example.

Also, imaging a DC is a really bad idea, because if you restore an image based backup to a DC, you will break replication.

 

[phoenix79]

Having a second DC is a great idea, but it isn't a replacement for a proper backup. A second DC won't help you if an OU gets deleted, for example.

Also, imaging a DC is a really bad idea, because if you restore an image based backup to a DC, you will break replication.

This. Use windows Server backup

 

[dawks]

Backing up the System State data using NTBackup covers AD information. My System State backup is about 650megs right now (theres more than just AD in there).

 

[yinan]

Actually the easiest way to backup AD is to have a second domain controller and upgrade your domain to server 2008 r2. This gets you the AD recycle bin, which you can use if an OU gets deleted.

 

[stash]

The AD recycle bin is not a replacement for backups. It only covers object deletions. What if an attribute on 1000 objects is changed? The recycle bin won't help you. It also doesn't help with any of the configuration container info that is replicated forest wide, GPO data, and a ton of other stuff.