Restore Domain Controller VM

[scotty_p]

We just had an issue with one of our domain controller virtual machines and needed to restore it from a backup. After the restore we are having all kinds of replication issues. Has anyone seen this before? Is there a proper way to restore a virtual machine of a domain controller?

Thanks,

Scott

[JaySMX · Accepted solution]

How old is the backup? Unless you need that DC for an authoritative restore or some other pressing reason, I always suggest promoting a new DC in place of the failed DC, seizing any FSMO roles and doing a metadata cleanup of the other DC to remove it from AD.

A metadata cleanup is a better option than restoring a DC with an older copy of AD and possibly introducing replication errors into your AD infrastructure.

[vmroyale]

Hello.

Check out Microsoft article id 875495.

Good Luck!

[scotty_p]

The restored DC is only from the previous day. Is there a way to correct this and resume replication or will I have to remove it from the environment and promote a new DC?

Thanks,

Scott

[amvmware]

You have to treate the recovery of a virtual DC the same as a physical - there are no short cuts or changes because it is a VM.

See the following MS article.

[amvmware]

You might find it less time consuming to power down the restored DC and follow the MS articles on removing a dead DC from your AD and install a new VM DC (deleting the old one) - the timeline to do this does depend on the scale of the environment and how long it takes for all the DC;s to be aware of the changes.

[Luckybob]

Check this technet article.

If you get frustrated with troubleshooting, reloading and promoting a DC should not take all that long.

[Gfuss]

Scott,

Not sure what you're seeing exactly, but after doing a P2V in the past, I had the imported VM go into a USN rollback state (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875495) as it thought it was a restored Domain Controller. In my case, I demoted the newly P2V'd DC, restarted, promoted it back again and all was well as it had a fresh copy of the database.

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Gfuss

[scotty_p]

Thanks to everyone for your help. Looks like I'll just have to recreate it.