Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Inside Out

Backing Up and Restoring Active Directory

Backing up Active Directory is easy. To back up Active Directory, all you need to do is back up the System State on a domain controller. However, recovery of Active Directory is different from recovery for other types of network services. A key reason for this involves the way Active Directory data is replicated and restored. Because of this, let's look at backup and recovery strategies for Active Directory, and then look at various restore techniques.

Backup and Recovery Strategies for Active Directory

Domain controllers have replication partners with whom they share information. When you have multiple domain controllers in a domain and one fails, the other domain controllers automatically detect the failure ...