Restoring server to different domain & server name?

[MitchR]

I have a multiple domain environemnt, with BE 12.5 installed with a tape library on each.  I want to prove we can System State restore one of our critical servers from the Production network.  I've moved tapes with a recent backup to a differnt domain (the Test network).  The hardware I'm restoring to is the same model.

So here's my problem, when I restore, the backups I restore from are "server1.production.com" - it has the full domain name in there.  The newly restored server will be residing on a different domain (test.com).  I've attempted redirecting the restore, but not sure how that works with System State.

In the end, my freshly restored server is black screening with system32 errors.  The restore's job log says:

Error category : Resource Errors
Error : e000848c - Unable to attach to a resource. Make sure that all selected resources exist and are online, and then try again. If the server or resource no longer exists, remove it from the selection list. Edit the selection list properties, click the View Selection D
 

...which basically says that Shadow Copy & System State failed.

Is it possible to restore this server to a different domain?

[NeerThadarai]

In short you are trying to perform a Disaster Recovery of a server (DC)

You need to install the server with the same OS and SP level and bring the server in the WORKGROUP.

Than perform the restore of the C: and System State and there is no Redirect Restore possible as you are performing the complete recovery. Once the restore is successfull it will bring the server to the same DOMAIN which was backed up.

Also you cannot Restore to a Different Domain. Once the server is up you could probably change the Domain Name, however, at the time of restore you cannot speficy a different domain name.

You can refer this article http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH83015   on the DR of various servers

[MitchR]

That matches what I'm seeing in my testing.  I can't restore to the same domain, because I'd have conflicts with the actual production server that I'm testing the backups of.

I can't restore to a different domain, because the backup selection list has the domain name with the server name. Is there a way to prevent that?

In short, it looks like there's no way to test System State restores without taking a production server outage, which isn't going to happen.

Any recommendations on how to test to see of BE full backups can be restored?

[MitchR]

On the plus side, this is not a DC (Domain Controller).  This is just a plain old member server, as far as AD goes.

[NeerThadarai]

If this is just a Member Server, again, the same procedure applies. What you can do is instead of restoring on a Production Network you can have an isolated Network and perform the restore there to test.

System State can be redirected, however, that would be just a file redirection just in case if you need some registry information or some other sytem file information. However, for Full Server Restore you need to restore as Is and than you can join/disjoin domain.