Windows 2008 x64 Domain Controller

Question

Has anyone successfully backed up and restored a Windows 2008 x64 Domain Controller with NetWorker? If so please tell me what version you are using, server and client. I have a Windows 2003 x64 server running Networker 7.4.2 backing up a Windows 2008 x64 Domain Controller. I've tried several versions in the 7.4.X family with varying degrees of success but all the restores fail. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Jeff

ble1 · Answer

I believe success in this case mostly depend on version used on client.  Can you tell us what errors did you get and give more details on steps you performed when doing restore.

MakoShark1 · Answer

Hrvoje, Thank you for the reply. Thus far I have  tried backing up and restoring my Windows 2008 domain controller with Networker 7.4.2, 7.4.5,7.4.5.2 and 7.4.5.3 7.4.2 and 7.4.5 backed up the files but the restore causes vss to balloon and fill the system disk. 7.4.5.2 I had a .lck error and was given 7.4.5.3 the same error occured so we fixed it but the client crashes when performing a client side backup. The server side worked but the resore throws errors that files cannot be overwritten even when booting into AD Restore mode. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks! Jeff

ble1 · Answer

There are always files that can't be overwritten, but this is why reboot is always required... but I guess this is not your problem.

One of the things to pay attention with win2k8 (as any other Windows) is the VSS patch level. I know for DR you were required to have KB955656 (at least for cluster pairs, but could be also standalone machines). With MPIO KB953531 was required.

Did you try 7.5.1.x client? I believe 7.5.1.7 is the latest one.

I plan to have POC for Windows 2003 DR (and maybe Windows 2000) soon... and next year same thing for AD machines (but this time I will use NMM most probably as we wish to have granular AD backup/restore capability). With Windows 2008 things might be completely different of course. Over the course of years I found that Windows DR tests are rather frustrating as you most probably need several patches by both backup vendor and MS. We tend to push all Windows boxes now to VmWare and protect them via snapshots... where restore, including DR, is no issue. Physical boxes are reserved for AD or SQL servers for now (even those SQL servers will be moving soon too).

MakoShark1 · Answer

Hrvoje,

At present I'm trying to break this down into the most simple restore possible with this release of windows. I have created a 2008 x64 server on a VMWare ESX 3.51 server. I've installed NetWorker 7.5.1 on it and backed it up. I made a clone of the 2008 x64 box and brought it up in a test enviormment. I took the backup tapes and moved them to my test enviroment and performed the restore in AD recovery mode with Windows User account control turned off. I first restoed VSS then the C:drive The restore worked successfully. I wanted to prove we can recover the box from a fresh install of Windows 2008 x64 so I created another VM and attempted the same restore to the new box using the same method but it failed.

I looked at KB955656 but it does not apply in this case since I am only restoring the local C: drive. I'm also thinking that MPIO is not coming into play here either.

Today, I'm attempting to recover the base install using NetWorker 7.5.1.7 to see if anything changes.

ble1 · Answer

If you use VM, why not simple use VCB for backup and restore? (even I'm not sure how this works with win2k8 guests and I heard some strange POVs by MS recently regarding win2k8 disaster recoverability)

NetWorker

Windows 2008 x64 Domain Controller

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