bboy77
asked on
Off Site disaster recovery planning
Hello,
I'm trying to put together a disaster recovery plan for my company. I have been doing research on this site and using several resources to put a plan together. I am familiar with the basics of disaster recovery preparation like maintaining off site tape backup storage, doing nightly backups etc. We currently signed a SLA with an off site disaster recovery center that we can use in case of a major disaster. i.e. this off-site location will provide us with 50 phones 30 desktop computers 40 desks and at T1 Internet connection.
We recently purchased a new Dell windows 2003 server which we would like to make a cold off site server that we can use at the off site recovery center in case of an disaster. On site we are running a windows 2000 domain with one windows 2000 pdc. I am using veritas back up exec to do nightly full backups of the system state,IIS, shared folders, some 3rd party applications and a 3rd party email hosting program. I made the new windows 2003 server a backup domain controller(bdc) in the current domain and active directory is replicating to it. Ideally I want to disconnect this BDC windows 2003 server from the on site network and take it to off site location. Then I want to be able to use the tape backup of the windows 2000 PDC and restore it to the server at the off site location to restore/update active directory, user accounts, applications, IIS and email etc.
The questions I have are as follows:
1)First what is the proper way to disconnect the BDC server? I'm sure I could just turn it off, but will that affect any users on my network? At the very least should I have them reboot their pc's after I disconnect the bdc so they authenticate against the pdc?
2) the windows 2000 pdc server and windows 2003 bdc are two different server hardware models but I basically would need to be able to mirror them from tape backup. Would restoring the system state to the windows 2003 server from a tape backup of the windows 2000 server work? i.e. would the user accounts, AD and shared folders be copied over. I presume overwriting the system state from a tape backup would make the windows 2003 server a PDC instead of a BDC.
thanks
I'm trying to put together a disaster recovery plan for my company. I have been doing research on this site and using several resources to put a plan together. I am familiar with the basics of disaster recovery preparation like maintaining off site tape backup storage, doing nightly backups etc. We currently signed a SLA with an off site disaster recovery center that we can use in case of a major disaster. i.e. this off-site location will provide us with 50 phones 30 desktop computers 40 desks and at T1 Internet connection.
We recently purchased a new Dell windows 2003 server which we would like to make a cold off site server that we can use at the off site recovery center in case of an disaster. On site we are running a windows 2000 domain with one windows 2000 pdc. I am using veritas back up exec to do nightly full backups of the system state,IIS, shared folders, some 3rd party applications and a 3rd party email hosting program. I made the new windows 2003 server a backup domain controller(bdc) in the current domain and active directory is replicating to it. Ideally I want to disconnect this BDC windows 2003 server from the on site network and take it to off site location. Then I want to be able to use the tape backup of the windows 2000 PDC and restore it to the server at the off site location to restore/update active directory, user accounts, applications, IIS and email etc.
The questions I have are as follows:
1)First what is the proper way to disconnect the BDC server? I'm sure I could just turn it off, but will that affect any users on my network? At the very least should I have them reboot their pc's after I disconnect the bdc so they authenticate against the pdc?
2) the windows 2000 pdc server and windows 2003 bdc are two different server hardware models but I basically would need to be able to mirror them from tape backup. Would restoring the system state to the windows 2003 server from a tape backup of the windows 2000 server work? i.e. would the user accounts, AD and shared folders be copied over. I presume overwriting the system state from a tape backup would make the windows 2003 server a PDC instead of a BDC.
thanks
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I do have veritas installed and will read up on restoring to different hardware.