AD Backup Policy Question

I understand - and do backup - the backup process for a domain
controller but have some questions about what others do. I'm trying to
make sure I'm doing what needs to be done when I need to recover.

1. We use IBM Tivoli as our Enterprise backup solution and it does a
System state backup on Windows. Comparing what Tivoli says they do with
the Technet and MSDN articles it does the same thing. However, I've
seen articles recommending that you use NTBackup to backup the system
state and then back up the resulting backup file. Is this necessary or
will Tivoli be adequate.

2. Member Servers - as far as I can tell these are just servers that are
domain members. If one dies you can remove it from the servers list in
the Users and Computers tool without any other action needed - correct?

For us it's easier to rebuild the server (reformat, reinstall Windows,
then the apps) and restore the backed up data. Is this acceptable for a
domain member server or can I have problems if I keep my data backed up
and plan on rebuilding the server when it dies?

Thanks for your input.

Howdie!

Am 07.06.2010 21:32, schrieb Grunt:
> 1. We use IBM Tivoli as our Enterprise backup solution and it does a
> System state backup on Windows. Comparing what Tivoli says they do with
> the Technet and MSDN articles it does the same thing. However, I've seen
> articles recommending that you use NTBackup to backup the system state
> and then back up the resulting backup file. Is this necessary or will
> Tivoli be adequate.

There's actually two things that need to be done as a backup solution to
be considered a "valid" restore:
(a) restore the system state correctly
(b) reset the database instance's invocationID.

The second step is just to make sure that replication kicks in and other
DCs notice that a restore of one of the systems has taken place. That's
all. I'm not sure if Tivoli does that but would be surprised if it
didn't. Most of the major backup/restore solutions do that. It doesn't
necessarily have to be NTBackup.

> 2. Member Servers - as far as I can tell these are just servers that are
> domain members. If one dies you can remove it from the servers list in
> the Users and Computers tool without any other action needed - correct?

Yeah, you can do that. You'll probably have to adjust DNS/IP data if the
box gets the same name but a different IP and stuff like that but for
plain AD, this should be okay.

Cheers,
Florian

Thank you, Florian. This helps. I'll plan on continuing to use Tivoli
as the backup system.

For member servers I'll just plan on starting fresh with them.



On 6/7/2010 15:55, Florian Frommherz [MVP] wrote:
> Howdie!
>
> Am 07.06.2010 21:32, schrieb Grunt:
>> 1. We use IBM Tivoli as our Enterprise backup solution and it does a
>> System state backup on Windows. Comparing what Tivoli says they do with
>> the Technet and MSDN articles it does the same thing. However, I've seen
>> articles recommending that you use NTBackup to backup the system state
>> and then back up the resulting backup file. Is this necessary or will
>> Tivoli be adequate.
>
> There's actually two things that need to be done as a backup solution to
> be considered a "valid" restore:
> (a) restore the system state correctly
> (b) reset the database instance's invocationID.
>
> The second step is just to make sure that replication kicks in and other
> DCs notice that a restore of one of the systems has taken place. That's
> all. I'm not sure if Tivoli does that but would be surprised if it
> didn't. Most of the major backup/restore solutions do that. It doesn't
> necessarily have to be NTBackup.
>
>> 2. Member Servers - as far as I can tell these are just servers that are
>> domain members. If one dies you can remove it from the servers list in
>> the Users and Computers tool without any other action needed - correct?
>
> Yeah, you can do that. You'll probably have to adjust DNS/IP data if the
> box gets the same name but a different IP and stuff like that but for
> plain AD, this should be okay.
>
> Cheers,
> Florian