Win2K3 - Domain Controller Backup

Hey all long time no see, hope your all well?

Not so long ago we only had one DC in our network and the server failed, luckily we managed to restore it other whiles we could of had massive problems.

We have now build a secondary DC to run along side it just in case it fails again. My question is, what if they where to both fail? Is there a way to backup all of the Active Directory onto disk and out of site so if they where to both fail, we could build a new DC server from scratch. I heard that you can do a system state backup, then restore it onto a different server, run dcpromo /adv and choose to restore from disk, rather than network but when I tried this it did not work, is this the correct way to restore a DC?

Any suggestions would be excellent
(Windows Server 2003 R2 domain environment)

one word: imaging. this is how we do it and it works all the time. give it a try. we use acronis.

Nice guide, will have a read through

Yes imagining sounds like a good way of doing it, will look into that too. Thanks guys

you could back it up, but if you really want a seamless failover you need to setup what is essentially a BDC (in nt4 terms at least) im no expert but i have managed to do it with dcpromo on a windows 2003 server, just point it at the current AD controller and your hot to trot. you may want to google it and read up on dcpromo though, just so your sure

like matty said, make sure you have plenty of domain controllers to go around. if you only have two right now, i would setup a few more. heck, virtualize them if you wish for easy restoration.