Restoring a server with NT Backup???

[johnkay21]

Has anyone restored a server from NTBACKUP?

What procedure do you take?

What steps do you follow?

Is everything backed up?

When you restore is it as if your server had never gone?

thanks

[Osprey]

Just had to do this Thursday night due to corrupt LSASS error. Server had mirrorred discs with C: (system) partition and D: (data) partition. I reinstalled Windows 2003 Server to the system partition from CD, doing a format of the disc. Once up and running I used NTBackup to restore the whole of c: and the system from the previous night's tape. Reboot, everything up and running fine.

I have played with this in the past just so that I knew that I could do it and I have found that if I don't format the disc as part of the reinstallation, all sorts of strange things can happen.

It's worth mentioning ASR (automated system recovery) which is part of NTBackup and, if I could have found the discs (!) would have saved me a lot of trouble last week.

[djm968]

What roll(s) is the server currently performing eg: Domain Controller/File Server/Exchange server?

I would suggest that the recovery procedure for a server should be adapted depending on the roll(s) of the server.

Sometimes it is more effective to re-build a server from scratch and only recover the data required for the roll(s)

Eg: for a DC you could re-build the server and just restore the active directory/sysvol/DHCP/DNS etc.

[Jon]

It all really depends on the typr of backup you have done...

If you have just an ordinary back up then it will involve having to reinstall th OS and then restoring the data.

If however you have been diligent you would have carried out an ASR (automatic system restore) backups. A restore from here will put your system back up and running very quickly including all of your AD database.

[plexer]

Cheese and Ham or Chicken are my favourite ones.

Ben

[contink]

Question on this...

a couple of the ASR backups I've been using have been to either USB drives or network drives via mapper network letters... I've not checked but I've a niggling feeling that this may not be a simple ASR restore... Anything I should bear in mind?