Recovery Manager for AD Disaster Recovery Edition 10.3.1 - User Guide

Restoring cross-domain group membership

When restoring an object, such as a user or computer, the Online Restore Wizard allows the restore of the object’s membership in all groups, including those groups that reside in domains outside the object’s home domain. This requires a backup that meets the following requirements:

• The backup must be taken from a domain controller that holds the Global Catalog role.

• The backup must have been created with the following option: When backing up Global Catalog servers, collect group membership information from all domains within the Active Directory® forest.

It is recommended that you restore objects from Global Catalog backups that were created with this option. Otherwise, restored objects may not retrieve their membership in some local groups. For example, suppose a user belongs to a local group defined in a resource domain other than the user’s home domain. If the restored user object were to lose its membership of that group, the user would no longer have the corresponding group permissions, and would therefore be unable to access some resources. This option is designed to overcome such issues.

To restore cross-domain group membership information

1. Start the Online Restore Wizard.

2. Follow the instructions in the wizard.

3. On the Backup Selection page, select a backup of a Global Catalog server. The backup must be created with the option When backing up Global Catalog servers, collect group membership information from all domains within the Active Directory® forest.

4. Follow the instructions in the wizard to complete the operation.

Performing a restore without having administrator privileges

With the Online Restore Wizard, you can perform a restore without having administrative access to the target domain controller. To restore object attributes, you must only have write access to the attributes being restored.

Restoration of deleted objects requires a target domain controller running Windows Server® 2008 or later. To restore a deleted object, the user account under which RMAD runs must have sufficient permissions to selectively recover Active Directory® objects. For more information about these permissions, see Permissions required to use Recovery Manager for Active Directory.

To perform a restore without having administrator privileges

1. Start the Online Restore Wizard.

2. Follow the instructions in the wizard.

3. If you are going to restore deleted objects, on the Domain Access Options page ensure that the target domain controller is running Windows Server® 2008 or later.

4. Follow the instructions in the wizard to complete the operation.

By default, the “Reanimate Tombstone” control access right is granted only to domain administrators. Domain administrators can grant the permission necessary to restore deleted objects to other users and groups by granting the user or group the “Reanimate Tombstone” control access right.

A security risk can be introduced by granting this permission, because it allows a user to restore an account that may have a level of access greater than that of the user. By restoring such an account, the user in effect gains control of that account. This is because the LDAP API does not restore the backed up account password, and so the user can set the initial password on the account.

Reports about objects and operations

Recovery Manager for Active Directory (RMAD) provides a number of reports that allow you to track changes made to Active Directory®, AD LDS (ADAM), and Group Policy objects and view summary information about the compare and restore operations performed on Active Directory® and AD LDS (ADAM) objects with RMAD.

To generate and view these reports, you can use the Online Restore Wizard, the Online Restore Wizard for AD LDS (ADAM), and the Group Policy Restore Wizard.

In this section:

• Reports about Active Directory objects

• Reports about AD LDS (ADAM) objects

• Reports about Group Policy objects

• Data about who modified Active Directory objects

Reports about Active Directory objects

The Online Restore Wizard provides reports that allow you to track changes of Active Directory® (AD) objects by comparing the state of objects in backup and in Active Directory®. You can also compare AD objects held in two backups.

You can generate and view a detailed report about a particular compare or restore operation that RMAD performed on AD objects. Alternatively, you can generate and view a summary of all compare and restore operations performed with RMAD on AD and AD LDS (ADAM) objects. Performing a compare operation on an AD or AD LDS (ADAM) object does not modify that object in any way.

To generate and view a report on AD objects

1. To start Online Restore Wizard, open Recovery Manager Console. Then right-click the Recovery Manager for Active Directory console tree root and select Online Restore Wizard.

2. Step through the wizard until you are on the Wizard Operation Mode page, then do one of the following:

   • If you want to compare AD objects in a backup against those in live Active Directory® or restore AD objects and view the restore operation report, select Compare, restore, and report changes in Active Directory.

   • If you want to compare Active Directory® objects in two backups, select Compare two backups and report the differences.

3. Step through the wizard until you are on the Action Selection page. Select Compare, analyze, and, optionally, restore.

4. Step through the wizard until you are on the Additional Options page. Select Generate report, then specify what kind of information you want included in the report.

5. Step through the wizard until you are on the Operation Option page. Click View Report.

You can use the Expand all or Collapse all element provided in the report to expand or collapse all object entries displayed in the report.

To view a summary of all compare and restore operations that RMAD performed on AD and AD LDS (ADAM) objects, click the View Summary Report button at the bottom of the report window.