Restoring from snapshot not recommended

[jschlangen]

I have a couple Win08 R2 domain controllers in VMs. I have read that Microsoft advises to never revert to a snapshot. This is an article I found that appears to be dated, so this might have changed.

Post:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888794

"Active Directory does not support other methods to roll back the contents of Active Directory. In particular, Active Directory does not support any method that restores a snapshot of the operating system or the volume the operating system resides on. This kind of method causes an update sequence number (USN) rollback. When a USN rollback occurs, the replication partners of the incorrectly restored domain controller may have inconsistent objects in their Active Directory databases. In this situation, you cannot make these objects consistent."

If this is still the case, please weigh in on this scenario for restore and if it's viable. I script snapshots, then schedule SAN checkpoints following snaps. After the checkpoint, I remove the snapshot. Now I believe I can back this up leaving out delta, vmsd, vswp, etc.

[brettparlier]

I read the same article, have the same 2008 DC's in a lab environment so I broke one and reverted to a snapshot. There have been no existing issues in the past few weeks.

[brettparlier]

I forgot to add, if the DC is one of your FSMO role holders, sieze the roles prior to restorin from the snapshot to avoid any serious issues should one arise.