Preserving Domain Information

[Clifton_Hasting]

Hello,

My questions revolve around preserving Active Directory domain information after restoring a recovery point using Restore Anywhere or converting a recovery point to a Virtual Disk.

I notice that if a restore is performed using Restore Anywhere that post-restore it performs something similar to sysprep and forces you to rejoin the domain (even if you choose to preserve the domain trust token information).  If you convert a recovery point to a virtual disk it doesn't even give you the option to rejoin the domain when it performs the sysprep on the first boot of the virtual disk.

This is a problem for me because I would like to test my Active Directory and Exchange 2003 environments in a virtual lab but with Exchange being so dependent on Active Directory and the domain I would prefer for the domain information to be preserved instead of removed.

Does anyone know of a way to override this behavior perhaps by editing the disk or virtual disk post-restore but before the initial boot?

Many thanks!

[Larry_Arndt]

We've purchased BESR 7.0 as part of our disaster recovery strategy, and I've just started working with it on the test network.  After creating a recovery point, I booted from the SRD.  While exploring the SRD's on-line Help, I noticed the following statement in the "recovering to a computer that has different hardware" section:

NOTE: You cannot restore an Active Directory domain server to different hardware.

If this is true, perhaps BESR isn't a complete solution for site disaster recovery.

[Clifton_Hasting]

Actually, BESR does support restoring Domain Controllers to dissimilar hardware via Restore Anywhere.

http://entkb.symantec.com/security/output/1544.html

The sysprep process is not allowed to remove the image from the domain because it recognizes that it is a Domain Controller image.  Unfortunately, it does remove my Exchange Server images from the domain and they would have to be rejoined to the domain to function.

I think that my question might be a moot point because I tested some scenarios where I needed to rejoin the domain and I was able to successfully using the BESR recovery disk.  I didn't have to reset the computer account and it reused the computer account that was already there.  Which is good because it tells me that it had the same SID and machine account password.

I guess I won't know the true answer to my question until I run my next disaster recovery test and see if my Exchange Servers will rejoin the domain and function after I restore them to dissimilar hardware.

[Larry_Arndt]

Thanks, Clifton, for the reassurance and the excellent link!