Restored Server 2003 Backup problem..

[MAXlMUS]

Hi Guys,

I have been trying out the TI Echo Enterprise Server with universal restore on one of our servers running server 2003 enterprise edition.

I backed up an image of the above named server then restored it to different hardware. It started up fine and after installing the requested drivers I added it to the network in place of the backed up server.

The problem is nobody can log on, the server can be pinged by the clients but when I try to log on to the domain it says the domain cant be found.

Any Ideas?

Cheers Mark

[OldITGuy]

If you are running in a Domain the server must be joined to the domain first. Even though you restored the image of a computer that was already a domain member you will have to make the new system the member of a workgroup, reboot, and then join it to the domain. However, there is still a matter of the security identifier (SID) for the computer. In a domain each computer must have a unique SID. If you have not accounted for that you will need to before you can join the domain. I haven't done that for a while, but there are some programs out there. I recall that Norton Ghost had a SID changer program you could use when distributing one image to multiple machines. You had to log onto the computer as a local administrator first, change the SID, and then join the computer to the domain. Then you can log into the computer using a domain user ID. I don't know if Acronis has something like that.

[MAXlMUS]

The compuer that I restored the image to was the main DC server . I will try disjoining the clients and rejoining them.

Cheers

Mark

[Acronis Support]

Hello MAXlMUS,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Remote Server Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please note that if the Primary Domain Controller goes down and the Backup Domain Controller automatically takes over, then the Active Directory will by out of Sync after the Primary Domain Controller is restored from a backup.

The are two solutions for the described problem:

1. Preventive

This solution allows to avoid such a problem — before it happens.

2. Resultive

This solution allows to solve such a problem after it happened.

Preventive solution:

Create Active Directory Backup.

If you ever need to restore the Active Directory, see Restoring Active Directory.

Resultive solution:

If you did not use the preventive solution, then you will need to demote and promote the restored server as a Domain Controller. While doing this you can encounter problems with the server demotion because of the absence of Sync and Replication. The only way is to force the server demotion by using dcpromo /forceremoval command. This will remove the server from the domain, but will not clean up the database of the current Domain Controller. See Domain controllers do not demote gracefully when you use the Active Directory Installation Wizard to force demotion in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows 2000 Server.

You will need to clean the database up manually as described in How to remove data in Active Directory after an unsuccessful domain controller demotion.

Please also take a look at the following article:

- How to detect and recover from a USN rollback in Windows Server 2003.

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov