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Calv1n

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contingency Plan for Primary Domain Controller Failure

Hello All,

I have taken over the position of Network Administrator at my company and I am trying to create some contingency plans for my work in case the worst happens. I have a network implementing active directory. Thank you again for your help as always.

I was wondering what steps I should take if my server that is acting as the primary domain controller which is named NS1 should fail. If some hardware were to breakdown that was not the hard rive, would I be able to take out the hard drive and plop it into another machine and boot it up? Would Windows 2003 Server have problems configuring the new hardware (mobo, proc, etc). Or would it run a lot less reliably?

Also if (God Forbid) the Hard drive were to fail, and I was forced to configure a new server completely. What services would I need to reconfigure to get the server running again? DHCP DNS and configure this thing to be the primary domain controller again. But is there anything I am missing? Or better yet do you know of anything I can use to backup up this machine without rebooting it. (I thought of Norton ghost, but that would require a reboot and buying expensive software.) Is there any export settings feature that I could use in order to import them later if the worst case scenario were to happen? Thank you again!



If this helps with the question, the basic network topology for this network is the following:

Here is a picture of the network structure.


http://static.flickr.com/60/174183996_7534f2238c.jpg?v=0

Here are the roles of the Servers for your knowledge.

NS1:

ROLE:
Primary Domain Controller
DNS Server
DHCP Server

SERVICES RUNNING:
DNS
DHCP

==============
Mail3

ROLE:

Exchange Server

RUNS:
Exchange Server
Secondary DNS

==============
FTP2

ROLE:
FTP Server
RUNS:
FTP Server (WarFTP)

NOTES:
Windows XP Pro

==============

Mail2

ROLE:
Mail Server

RUNS:
Exchange Server (Dormant)

==============

SERVERS BEHIND THE ISA FIREWALL

==============

SQ7Server / ISA Server

ROLE:

ISA Firewall


RUNS:
ISA Server

==============

Web Servers

ROLE:
Internet Server
Database Server

RUNS:
SQL Server
IIS Server


As always thank you for your continued help, this site is my favorite place to gain knowledge!

-Brian
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Lee W, MVP
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