Quest® Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory
Release Notes
Februay 12, 2025
Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory offers off-network abilities to manage on-premises domain controllers, including Active Directory® backups and restore operations, in the case of a disaster. It is essential for any modern business have uninterrupted network and computer systems, which are essential for business continuity. Unforeseen outages, like directory service failures, can significantly disrupt operations. To mitigate such risks, critical infrastructure must be designed for swift recovery from failures.
Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory leverages advanced technologies to minimize downtime resulting from Active Directory corruption or accidental modifications. This solution automates backups and enables rapid, remote recovery of data stores in Active Directory. Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory dramatically reduces the time required to restore Active Directory.
Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory allows you to perform the following operations:
- Configure and manage backups using Backup Plans.
- Store Active Directory backups in Quest Azure tenant.
- Configure and manage recovery of an Active Directory forest.
- Restore Active Directory using Clean OS method, allowing you to restore the entire forest or any of its parts on a freshly installed Windows machine.
- Schedule backup of domain controllers based on business needs
- Verify recovery configurations to validate your disaster Recovery Plan
These release notes provide information about Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory deployments.
Topics:
Welcome! You are among the first to try Active Directory disaster recovery from the cloud using Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory. With this solution, you can:
- Rapidly recover from Active Directory disasters
- Protect identities and improve security
- Maximize availability
- Reduce footprint and lower cost
- Streamline operations
Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory is currently in Technical Preview, offering use of select features of the product.
After signing up to Quest On Demand, to launch the product, click Recover on the left pane, then click Active Directory. The Environments screen will open.
For more information about managing your organization, see the Managing organizations and regions in the On Demand Global Settings User Guide.
For more information on assigning roles, see the Adding users to an organization section in the On Demand Global Settings User Guide.
Below are the steps required to successfully utilize Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory:
- Deploy Hybrid Agents
- Add the Active Directory forest into the product by creating an environment and selecting Hybrid Agent.
- Discover Forest Topology and install Domain Controller Agents
- Create Backup Plans and schedule regular backups.
- Create a Recovery Plan.
- Verify the Recovery Plan.
In this topic:
Recommendations and requirements
- To preview features of Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory, ensure to use a test environment (Active Directory forest/domain/domain controllers).
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Caution: The use of these features should not be used in a production environment. |
- The use of Simulation mode is highly recommended (see below). All participants of the Technical Preview will have Simulation mode available for their organizations.
- For customers of Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition (RMAD DRE), the backup agent and forest recovery agent are not supported. New agents will need to be installed and configured using the Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory portal. The minimum supported version of the Domain Controller Agent is 10.3.1.43736.
Providing feedback
For any questions or issues using the product, please contact Quest Support.
Simulation mode
Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory allows users to run Recovery Plans and verification/recovery operations via Simulation mode. This mode runs through simulated verification or recovery operations using topology information from the connected Active Directory forest and its backups. This mode successfully completes verification/recovery operations without utilizing target machines, giving users the opportunity to test the workflow of Recovery Plans and identify issues without risk to their data or forest.
To use Simulation mode, users will need to setup their environments and backups as usual through the Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory user interface. See the Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory User Guide for more.
To enable Simulation mode for a specific Recovery Plan:
- After the creation of an environment and backups, go to the Recovery screen and click Add Recovery Plan.
- After naming the Recovery Plan, click the Enable Simulation mode toggle. Proceed to create the Recovery Plan as normal.
- Click Save.
To indicate if a Recovery Plan is in Simulation mode, a badge or icon will be displayed in the following locations:
- In the taskbar on the Recovery Plan details screen
- In the taskbar on the Domain Controller Operations screen
- On the Recovery Plan's Recovery card
- On individual tasks on the Tasks screen
- On individual events on the Events screen
The following lists the new features and resolved issues by deployment.
Current Deployment
Release: Februay 12, 2025
| Support of 'Install Active Directory' method' |
ADO-379572 |
| Display time of the last discovery on the Topology tab |
ADO-504703 |
| Ability to see when the Hybrid Agent is offline |
ADO-517362 |
| Download DC Agent from the Topology tab |
ADO-526146 |
| Display the total elapsed time from the Tasks tab |
ADO-531124 |
| Increase retention period for backups to 180 days |
ADO-535313 |
Previous Deployments
Release: January 10, 2025
| First deployment of Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory |
N/A |
The following is a list of issues, including those attributed to third-party products, known to exist at the time of release.
General known issues
| Currently, any deployments of Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory will stop ongoing backups, verification and recovery operations. They will need to be restarted manually. |
ADO-520301 |
| Minimum supported version of Domain Controller Agent is 10.3.1.43736. Installed agents from Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory are not supported with the Technical Preview. |
ADO-525871 |
