Experts,
I set up a sandbox in windows azure with a new forest with 4 domains for the purposes of testing a migration plan. None of these domains exist in our live environment yet, so I just created several new 2008 r2 VM's and promoted them to domain controllers as I went.
I would also like to have a copy of our actual live single domain created on the same virtual network which is totally isolated from our live environment. This domain would be in it's own forest and then I would create trusts between it and the new forest I created and use the ADMT tool for testing.
Truth be told, I have never had to do a full restore of active directory before, and with the added challenge of this being through windows azure where I won't actually have access to the console, I am unsure how to proceed.
Suggestions?
ASKER
If I understand you correctly you are saying that I could use a backup/restore utilizing what, windows server backup on 2008? and then spin up a hyper-v VM on premises but isolated from the other DC's. From that point I would just shut down the VM and upload the VHD file to azure?
Any articles or step by steps for a hyper-v beginner?