Recovery Manager for AD Forest Edition 10.2.1 - User Guide

Resuming an interrupted forest recovery

Recovery Manager for Active Directory provides the Fault Tolerance feature that allows you to resume the last forest recovery operation in case it was unexpectedly interrupted by one of these events:

• You close the Forest Recovery Console while the forest recovery operation is still running.

• The Forest Recovery Console unexpectedly shuts down partway through the forest recovery operation.

• The computer running the Forest Recovery Console powers off while the forest recovery operation is still running.

When the Fault Tolerance feature is enabled, it constantly saves the current forest recovery operation state to a dedicated SQL Server database named ForestRecovery-Persistence. Each time you start the Forest Recovery Console, a check is performed to see whether the last forest recovery operation was interrupted by any of the events listed earlier in this section. If that is true, the Forest Recovery Console prompts you to resume the forest recovery from the point at which it was interrupted.

In case you choose not to resume an interrupted forest recovery operation and select the Delete last recovery session data option in the Resume Recovery wizard, the saved session state will be permanently deleted from the ForestRecovery-Persistence database.

Permissions required to access the ForestRecovery-Persistence database

• Add an account that is used to access the ForestRecovery-Persistence database as the Security Login in SQL Server Management Studio. The public role will be automatically granted to the user account on the Server Roles tab of Login Properties.

• Add users mapped to this Login and assign the db_datareader role on the User Mapping page of the Login Properties to use the account as the Forest Recovery project reader.

• Explicitly grant the Execute right on the Permissions tab of the ForestRecovery-Persistence database Properties.This permits to use the account for the Restore operation.

For the Fault Tolerance feature, all involved console instances must have the same communication keys that is used to communicate with Forest Recovery Agents without using the domain access credentials.

To share secure communication keys between console instances

1. Open or create a recovery project in Forest Recovery Console.

2. On the menu bar, select Tools | Fault Tolerance.

3. Click Export secure communication keys… and specify the "secure communication keys" file location and access credentials.

4. Save the "secure communication keys" file.

5. Then, launch another instance of Forest Recovery Console.

6. On the menu bar, select Tools | Fault Tolerance | Import secure communication keys…, specify the "secure communication keys" file and click Open.

7. Reinstall the agents if they were uninstalled.

8. For security reasons, remove the "secure communication keys" file from your computer after the Fault Tolerance feature will be configured.

To modify the fault tolerance settings for a recovery project

1. In Forest Recovery Console, select Tools | Fault Tolerance | Settings from the toolbar.

2. In the Fault Tolerance Settings dialog, use the following options:

Recovery persistence settings

Enable fault tolerance

Allows you to enable or disable the Fault Tolerance feature by selecting or clearing this check box.

SQL Server name and instance

Allows you to specify the SQL Server instance in which you want to store the current forest recovery operation state. To specify a SQL Server instance, use the format <SQLServerName>/<Instance>. The forest recovery operation state is saved to a SQL Server database named ForestRecovery-Persistence. If the ForestRecovery-Persistence database does not exist in the SQL Server instance you specify, it will be created there. If the ForestRecovery-Persistence database already exists in the SQL Server instance you specify, the data in that database will not be erased until you start a new forest recovery operation. Until that moment, you can resume the interrupted forest recovery operation whose state is held in the specified ForestRecovery-Persistence database.

Authentication method

Allows you to select a method for authenticating on the specified SQL Server.

• Use Windows authentication. Allows you to authenticate with the user account under which the Forest Recovery Console is currently running.

• Use SQL authentication. Allows you to authenticate with the user name and password specified in this option. This authentication method is recommended when Recovery Manager for Active Directory uses the ForestRecovery-Persistence database that is hosted on an external SQL Server computer and not on the computer where Recovery Manager for Active Directory is running.

List of consoles

Shows the list of Forest Recovery Consoles configured to support the Fault Tolerance feature.

Recovering read-only domain controllers (RODCs)

Recovery Manager for Active Directory supports recovering read-only domain controllers (RODCs) from backups.

The full list of recovery methods that can be applied to the RODCs in your recovery project:

• Restore SYSVOL

  This method allows you to perform the non-authoritative restore of RODCs

• Reinstall Active Directory or Reinstall Active Directory from Media on the RODCs

• Install Active Directory or Install Active Directory from Media on the RODCs

• Uninstall Active Directory from the RODCs.

• Do not recover the RODCs.

If you want to recover a read-only DC, you need to select the Install the domain controller as a read-only option on the General tab for the Install Active Directory (with IFM option) or Reinstall Active Directory (with IFM option) method in Forest Recovery Console. A read-only DC can be installed using a backup created only from the RODC.
Depending on whether the option is selected or not, you can only choose backups that DC Type corresponds to the type of domain controller (ReadOnly, Writable).

Checking forest health

The Forest Recovery Console provides a tool that allows you to check the health of your forest. You can use the tool to run tests to ensure that domain controllers, Active Directory replication, domain trusts, user authentication, RID Master, and global catalog are working properly in your Active Directory forest.

The Forest Recovery Console automatically prompts you to check the forest health after the forest recovery has succeeded, so that you could ensure the forest works exactly the way you want. If necessary, you can manually run a health check on your forest at any time before or after the forest recovery operation.

What does Recovery Manager for Active Directory check?

Domain controllers

• Verifies that every domain controller in a forest is accessible and running using the LDAP bind request to the directory root (RootDSE) of a domain controller.

• Checks that Forest Recovery Agents are installed on domain controllers and accessible using the RPC call to get information about agents and domain controller states.

Active Directory replication

• Forces the replication for one random object on every replication partner for every partition of a domain controller using the replicateSingleObject operation.

Domain trusts

• Checks that all trust relationships between domains configured in Active Directory forest are fully established.

User authentication; RID Master and GC operation

• Verifies that a user account is created in the default or specified container on each domain controller. Then, LDAP authentication is performed using this account to check that the Global Catalog server is available for the domain controller.

To run a forest health check

1. Open your recovery project.

2. In the Forest Recovery Console, from the main menu, select Tools | Diagnose | Check Forest Health.

3. In the dialog box that opens, on the Settings tab, select the check boxes next to the items whose health you want to check.

4. When finished, click the Check Health button.

When the check health operation completes, use the Details tab to view information about the health of the selected items.

If you select the User authentication; RID Master and GC operation option on the Settings tab, you can specify a container for the test user account on the domain controller.

For the list of required permissions, see Recovery Manager .

To specify a container for the test user account

1. Close the Forest Recovery console.

2. Open the project (.frproj) file that was created by the Console and edit the '<Domains>' section, as shown in the following example.

You can specify different containers for different domains.

<Domains>
  <Domain DomainName="rmad.local" HealthCheckContainer="OU=test1" />
  <Domain DomainName="second.rmad.local" HealthCheckContainer="OU=test2” />
</Domains>

To specify the same container for different domains, you can use the asterisk wildcard (*), for example:

<Domains>
  <Domain DomainName="*" HealthCheckContainer="OU=test1" />
</Domains>

You should specify the relative container distinguished name for the HealthCheckContainer attribute. For example, if the full DN of the container is OU=test1,DC=rmad,DC=local, specify the DN name as OU=test1.

Collecting diagnostic data for technical support

There may be a situation where technical support requests you to gather and supply diagnostic data from your computer collection. For this purpose, you can use a special tool provided in the Forest Recovery Console. This tool is called Diagnostic Data Collector.

• From Forest Recovery Console machine

  • Collects the data saved in the current Recovery Project (.frproj) file, except for the passwords stored in that file.

  • Collects the Forest Recovery Console log

  • Collects the Recovery Manager for Active Directory event logs

  • .db3 database files

  • Recovery Manager for Active Directory

• From Domain Controller

  • Collects Backup and Restore agent logs

  • Collects system event logs

  • Windows debug logs

  • Runs Microsoft Netdiag, Dcdiag, Nltest, MsInfo32 and Repadmin tools (in diagnostic mode only), and then collects the output provided by these tools. The tools are started by Collectdcdata.cmd and you can modify the list of collected logs.

To gather diagnostic data for your recovery project by using the Diagnostic Data Collector, you need to complete the following steps:

• Step 1: Use Diagnostic Data Collector to automatically gather data. In this step, you use the Diagnostic Data Collector to automatically gather diagnostic data from each domain controller in your recovery project and save the data to the folder you specify. You can perform this step regardless of whether or not a recovery operation is currently running on the recovery project. If this step completes successfully for all domain controllers, Step 2 is not needed.

• Step 2: Gather remaining data manually. You need to perform this step only for those domain controllers from which you could not successfully collect data in Step 1. In Step 2, you copy several files supplied with Recovery Manager for Active Directory to the target domain controller, and then run one of the copied files. As a result, diagnostic data is collected from the domain controller and saved to a new folder created in the location from which you ran the file.

The next sections provide instructions on how to complete each of these steps.