Re-instal windows server?

[powdarrmonkey]

The reason its referred to as building a server rather than just reinstalling Windows is because building a server also includes setting up all of the network configuration as well. If you have exact documentation of the original setup of the network, then it might be possible to get Windows reinstalled in two hours. Next month you could go back in and use their careful documentation to reconfigure the server in the two hours then. Following that you could probably do a quick run-around and rejoin the workstations to the network the month after.

 

That leaves all their kit out of action for the best part of three months, not an acceptable solution IMHO.

[jamesb]

That leaves all their kit out of action for the best part of three months, not an acceptable solution IMHO.

 

Nor in my opinion. I wasn't recommending it as a serious solution, more as a note that while it is possible and not necessarily difficult, there's no way it could be done in the time available. Certainly not without details of the current setup, backups in place, and preferably a second server to keep everything up and running while its being done.

[Tamarside]

You have a different option open to you, if you truly HAD to re-build the server.

Using NTBackup, make a backup of the server's System State, which on a DC includes Active Directory.

Following this, re-install Windows Server to the same location (I seriously would caution against formatting the partition!) but don't give it the same name, nor should you make ANY changes to it!

After the installation completes in as unmodified manner asd you can get away with, run NTBackup again and restore the System State to original location. At the end of this process the server will want to reboot and once it had done so, you'll have AD back again.

 

Having said all that, I would strongly advise you against a server rebuild of any kind, regardless of the time you may have to do it in.

 

There aren't normally that many things going wrong on a DC and short of AD being completely wonky you're probably better off simply redoing all your GPO's and revisting all your scripts.

This you can do at your leisure by setting up new OU's in AD to do your testing in. Once you're happy that everything's fine, start building a new workstaion image, re-image the lot and then move them to the new OU after they've joined the domain.

 

I would suggest using a few tools, starting with SYDI, which can be had for free from here: Network Documentation Made Easy with SYDI

That would be the beginnings of your documentation, and SYDI will actually even document file shares - essential info should you actually be forced to do a bare metal rebuild.

 

Best of luck!

[7andY]

Being serious, I have to say that building a new server - even if using old kit - and setting that up as the main server while you re-build the old one sounds the best way forward. You could even leave the 'new build from old kit' machine in place afterwards as a second DC to share a bit of the load. If it's an 'old kit' build, just leave it as a DC and don't give it anything else to do, except maybe to hold copies of any data held on the main server, perhaps from an overnight backup. You can always throw loads of discs at these servers, and they're cheap enough nowadays.

The whole lot could perhaps be done in a couple of hours by a Server specialist, but I'd want at least a day for each of the basic builds, then another two or three days to make sure everything was working OK. If you're not confident with servers, then I would think a couple of weeks...

As an afterthought, perhaps the idea of rebuilding to a partition is to preserve any files/folders on the other partition(s). If there is data there, this would be a prudent course to take, after taking a full backup, of course!

 

7&Y

[Tamarside]

Adding on to what 7&Y said, you should ALWAYS try to have two DC's, for redundancy purposes. Microsoft suggests to also have two DNS and DHCP servers, and they suggest the 2nd DHCP server to have capacity to dish out 20% of IP's on your network.

 

I normally go a touch further than this and ensure I have 100% redundancy between DHCP servers, as in each DHCP server has sufficient addresses to dish one out to all devices on the network.

 

Regardless which of the methods above you decide to persue, do yourself a favour and backup the system state from your current DC before doing anything.

 

Good luck!