Restore AD to PDC when Veritas is on PDC...

[iamtim]

I think I'm really in a hurting position; last night the RAID on the PDC crashed hard and we lost Active Directory.  It looks like the drive AD was on has gone bad; we're trying to fix the disk right now.

If we wind up getting the RAID back online without that drive, we'll have to restore AD.  But we ran Veritas from our PDC, which we can't get into because it's down.

So.

How do I do an AD restore to my PDC when then only Veritas installation is on that box and I can't get to it?

Thanks.

[Hywel_Mallett]

Do you mean you can't get to Backup Exec because you've got no AD, and no AD because you've got no BE?

If so, and you think you can get that server restarted in some way, then start it in Active Directory Services Restore Mode. Set the BE Services to run as LocalSysytem, and start them. Then restore the contents of any lost disks. Then restore the Shadow Copy Components, and mark as primary arbitrator for replication. Use NTDSUtil to mark the restored data as authoritative.

Then reboot and everything will work just fine ;)

Have a look at Performing a local authoritative disaster recovery

You're going to have to improvise depending upon how much of your Domain Controller you can get working.