reinstall 2003+active directory

[Outpost]

Hi,

 

Hope you all had a great christmas.

Came in this morning and the Hard drive failed in our domain controller.

Dell sent a new one out immediatly.

I have never repaired a server to this extent before so I would like to know if there are any gotchas to look out for. We have exchange 2003 on a member server which is unaffected.

 

Would I be right to install OS then add active directory then apply the backup.?

[markcuk]

do you have raid on your domain controller!?

[Outpost]

No, its just a single scsi drive

[cookie_monster]

If you have a full backup then a full restore will get you back up and running, i usually make sure the system state is restored last.

 

This is assuming that as markcuk says you have your RAID setup correctly if you have it.

[markcuk]

try this got this off the veritas forum

 

Domain Controller Restore

 

1) Rebuild the Server to Windows 2003

2) Accept all the defaults for speed as the restore will set all the regional and licence information up

3) Do not join the domain that the DC was in

4) Do not install Active Directory

5) Call the server the same name as your old server

6) Make a note of the admin password you set. You’ll need this later on.

7) Once the server is rebuilt, reboot and login as Administrator and the password

8) Set the IP address to match your backup server. This means they can talk to each other.

9) Ping your backup server to ensure connectivity

10) Install the Veritas Remote Agent asking Veritas to reboot once completed.

11) Once the server has come up you need to go to your backup server and complete a ping to ensure network connectivity

12) Go back to your new Domain Controller and check that you have the same drives you had on your old Domain Controller and that they are all formatted and ready for use.

13) Reboot your new Domain Controller and press F8 just before it boots into W2K3

14) Select Directory Restore Mode (Windows Domain Controllers Only)

15) Login with the Admin password you used in step 6

16) Now go back to your Backup Server and go to backup

17) Check that you can see your new Domain Controller by selecting it as if you wanted to back it up. If you get any errors about login rights then you will need to set another service account up within Backup Exec

18) If you can see all your drives then you are ready to restore.

19) Go to restore and select all the drives from your old server including the Shadow Copy Components

20) It might take a while but it should restore OK.

21) Finally if everything has gone OK you should get a message from Backup Exec asking you to restart your Domain Controller. BEFORE you reboot your Domain Controller make sure that your boot.ini file is correct otherwise you’ll have to repair it before your Windows server will ever reboot again!

22) Once the boot.ini is correct reboot the server

23) When the server comes up it should be working OK. It might take a little longer to boot if its not being restored back to the same server as before. (Hardware changes and such). Also it may do an Active Directory reindex.

 

you really should get your drive mirrored at least

 

mark

[FN-GM]

If you have not backup and this is your DC with FMSO roles you might be stuffed.

[Outpost]

Just to let you know how it went.

 

First as suggested by cookie-monster I restored the data on the drives (1 drive 2 partitions). Went ok apart from some areas in Program Files, mainly Sophos I think. Then went for the system state and rebooted. Again went ok.

Now I have the Domain Controller back up and running. I didn't go the veritas route but I did use the list as a check point so thanks for that.

Exchange seems happy as well. I do have niggly problems now such as windows update services not working and sophos on clients not picking up updates from the enterprise which is hosted on the domain server.

 

Big test will be when school starts next week.

 

Thanks everyone.

[cookie_monster]

We had a problem with the RAID backplain on 2 of our Dell servers both had to be completely restored and both times there were niggles like the AV needing reinstalling and so on but once they're ironed out it sould be plain sailing.

[markcuk]

no problems glad it went well :-)

[Michael]

Coincidentally I may be in the same position tomorrow, as a teacher text me earlier unable to Remote Desktop into the domain!

 

I can ping my workstation and SQL server but not the DC!

 

To clarify then, the initial steps are to see if the computer POSTs and then hopefully by pressing F8 I enter Directory Services Restore Mode. If I get this far, I can then perform a full boot and system restore seeing as I have just the one DC in this domain.

 

If I cannot press F8, what are my options? Repair Windows? And if repairing doesn't work, then reinstall 2003 Server from new, promote to a DC and install AD? Then reboot and restore as above?

[cookie_monster]

If you have a full backup then install Windows and your backup software don't add it to the domain as the restore will replace all of the SID information. Then perform a full restore from your latest backup media.

[Michael]

Well the software I use is NTBackup.exe, so do I still promote the server as a domain controller, install AD then by performing a full restore should associate it back with the domain itself?

[cookie_monster]

No DON'T join it to the domain as this will install a new OS with a different SID, just install Windows and leave it in a workgroup then run the restore. Once you reboot the DC will be restored as it was when the backup was taken.

 

Take a look at this link

 

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/a3a50047-5abd-4561-bab4-658097bbb6271033.mspx?mfr=true

[chrbb]

Out of interest if the server had raid, at what point do configure the raid array, before or after the restore?

 

 

Here is another link to server 2003 restore, more or less the same as previous link

 

bare metal restore

[ITWombat]

Out of interest if the server had raid, at what point do configure the raid array, before or after the restore?

 

If it is hardware RAID then you would do the setup before the OS install. In this way the Windows will see things as it remembers.

[Michael]

Thanks for the clarification cookie_monster, much appreciated

 

As for RAID, (as already mentioned) hardware RAID is transparent to the operating system, whereas software RAID is controlled using Computer Management > Disk Management, (2000/XP/2003) where you specify whether you want a mirrored, striped or RAID 5 setup. Remember to convert your basic disks to dynamic first!

[m25man]

I hate to say this, but twice before when clients have had Dell SBS 2003 Servers fail with HDD problems (Both SATA Raid), they have diagnosed the problem with the clients and sent out new disks.

 

Both times, Dell Engineers were despatched to replace the faulty disks and to do a factory OEM image restore. The customers are advised that they need to restore all data, exchange and AD from a backup themselves.

 

Both times I got there just before Dell did and ran a chkdsk on the defective drive from a system CD boot.

 

Both times the system came back from the brink. Simply replaced the defective drive and rebuilt the mirror.

 

Both times these systems disks had failed after an unexpected power outage.

If Dell are so good why did they never manage to sell a UPS with these servers in the first place?

 

As always, prevention is often a lot less stressful than cure.

[apeo]

If Dell are so good why did they never manage to sell a UPS with these servers in the first place?

 

Surely its the decision of the buyer when it comes to getting a ups with the server.

 

We have a few Dell servers here and generally they arent bad, have had some hardware die but after sales servise from dell was good.

[Outpost]

Must admit Dell replaced my knackered hard drive within 4 hours by courier.

[srochford]

Surely its the decision of the buyer when it comes to getting a ups with the server.

 

 

 

Absolutely! If you order on-line (or even just get a quote on-line) then UPS is offered as an option (as are tape drives and all the other things which are useful in a server system)