test of disaster recovery domain controller

[slawek]

Hello

I need to recover my domain controller - just for test of my disaster recovery plan.

I can't do that in production environment. I made special network subnet isolated from production environment. There is VM with the same OS and BEX agenet installed.

I know http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH83015 but maybe I'm blind but I cant find article that shows me how to recover a DC to different computer. I have one BackupExec media center and I wouldnt create a second just for this test.

Is it posssible to do?

With regards

SLawek

[pkh]

In BE 2010, you cannot recover a server, any server, to dissimiliar hardware because of missing/incompatible drivers.  In BE 2012, SDR or P2V will overcome this problem.

[slawek]

I know that I cant recovery to different hardware. This DC that I try to recovery is a VM, so I have new VM with the same hardware version and the same vierual hardware.

What I need is to redirect recovery to different computer name - is it possible?

With regards

SLawek

[pkh]

There is a chapter in the Admin Guide called Preparing for Disaster Recovery.  This will tell you how to recover your DC, including authoritative or non-authoritative restore of your AD.

You might want to use IDR to speed up your recovery.

[slawek]

I know Admin Guide:

"This basic Windows installation is necessary to provide Backup Exec with a

target to which it can restore the system. The computer name, Windows

directory, and the file system (such as NTFS) must be the same as the previous

Windows installation"

But this is not useful for testing purposes.

I have another idea to create 2 VM, one for BE MediaServer and second for recovery od DC. But it take a lot of time to prepare.

I'm looking for solution with test recovery without creating second MediaServer because my backups are on tapes, so I need to dupliate tape to disk, next copy it to MS....

How do you test a data recovery domain controller?

With regards

SLawek

[pkh · Accepted solution]

If you do not want to test your restore to a spare server, the only option is to restore to your original server.  I don't think you want to do this.

Otherwise, without doing a restore, how do you propose to test your recovery?