Hi I am working on a Disaster Recovery Strategy for our company and have a question around restoring a Domain Controller. Currently we have 3 sites each with their own domain controllers. We currently backup these Domain Controllers taking full server images however we also take a system state backup on the DC in our main site. The idea here being that if any of the sites go down we can restore the DC controller and other servers within that site as Virtual Machines on a DR system. Recently I have began to doubt whether a restored DC from an Image will "talk" to the other domain controllers at the other sites. These concerns arise from reading about possible issues when restoring a DC from an Image. Obviously restoring the DC from the Image is alot quicker than installing Server 2008 and then promoting it to be DC. Can anyone shed any light on the above i.e. would a DC restored from an image replicate with the DC's in the other sites? The restored DC would still have the same SID etc. Thanks

Normally, restoring your DC will not cause the replication issues you mentioned. Let's suppose now that you restored a faulty DC from an image and you had replication problems. In this case, you can proceed by demoting the DC (you can use dcpromo /forceremoval), resize the FSMO roles that the faulty DC was the holder and then proceed by a metadata cleaup if the you use dcpromo /forceremoval command. After the demotion, you can promote it again then make sure that it is part of the right site. You can also proceed by transfer of FSMO roles that were resized to this DC. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights. Microsoft Student Partner Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Security Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Security Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration

Hi, Thanks I think the main concern is the USN Rollback issue when restoring from an image. As you mention however the worstt case scenario would be to run the force removal demotion and then re-promote on the restored DC.

Post your query on Windows Backup forum. ThanksYousuf Ali | Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011

Hi, Restoring DC from Image is a really problem from my experience too. You must do backups of system state regulary. And then, you can restore system from image and then you should restore last system state. Or you can have prepared image of clean installation of Windows in order to speed up restore process. (clean Windows + system state) Or you can use special backup tools (for instance bare-metal restore from DPM 2010) VitVas

Restoring from an image may cause USN rollbacks. Let's suppose now that you restored a faulty DC from an image and you had this problem. In this case, you can proceed by demoting the DC (you can use dcpromo /forceremoval), resize the FSMO roles that the faulty DC was the holder and then proceed by a metadata cleaup if the you use dcpromo /forceremoval command. After the demotion, you can promote it again then make sure that it is part of the right site. You can also proceed by transfer of FSMO roles that were resized to this DC. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights. Microsoft Student Partner Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Security Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Security Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration

Hello, images are NOT supported way for backup of DCs. As you said this result in USN rollback. Please follow this way for backup/restore of DCs: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772519(WS.10).aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc816916(WS.10).aspx Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Meinolf pointed Perfectly the issue you are facing is due to USN rollback as images are not supported for restores. Please see this kb article to recover from usn roll backs http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875495 http://exchangeserverpro.com/event-id-2095-and-the-usn-rollback-adventurehttp://www.virmansec.com/blogs/skhairuddin