Recovery Manager for AD 10.3 - User Guide

Recommendations

The backup creation times for your Active Directory® database may vary based on size of the database and a number of other factors including the hardware on the domain controller and how densely the Active Directory® database is populated. You can use the examples above as a guide in determining how long it will take to backup your own Active Directory® database, but keep in mind that these times are not directly related to the size of the database (i.e. a 6 GB database may not take exactly twice as long to backup as a 3 GB database). The best way to determine what to expect for backup times in your own environment is to create a backup of a production domain controller.

Compression ratios can vary depending on how densely populated the Active Directory® database is, but typically using a higher compression method has diminishing returns in terms of the final compressed size of the backup. To ensure both a reasonable backup time and a reasonable compressed backup size it is recommended to use either Fast or Normal compression.

Typical times to unpack backups

Before using a packed backup file (e.g. in the Online Restore Wizard), RMAD must unpack it.

The following table illustrates the typical times required to unpack backups.

Typical times to unpack backups

Typical sizes of databases

Configuration database files

Recovery Manager for Active Directory employs the following database files (.mdb):

• Rmad.db3. RMAD configuration database. It contains information on the console configuration, such as the managed Computer Collections, backup creation sessions, etc.

• Backups.mdb. RMAD backup registration database. It contains information on the registered Active Directory and AD LDS (ADAM) backups.

As a rule, the file size for .mdb files does not exceed 10 MB.

Reports database files

The Online Restore Wizard provides comparison and restore reports based on per-attribute comparisons of directory objects selected from a backup, with their counterparts in Active Directory® or another backup.

RMAD incorporates Microsoft SQL® Reporting Services (SRS). Microsoft SRS is the new reporting standard, replacing the XML-based comparison and restore reports offered by previous versions. For more information, refer to the User Guide supplied with this release of RMAD.

The size of the reports database file depends on the following parameters:

• Number of the directory objects the Online Restore Wizard has processed.

• Number of the processed attributes.

• Type of the processed attributes.

• Number of the available Online Restore Wizard sessions. Note that the information on all sessions is stored in a single reports database file.

To estimate the reports database file size, use the following empiric formula:

6 x <Number of processed objects> / 1000 [MB]

For example, if the Online Restore Wizard has processed 3,000 objects, the reports database file size will be approximately 18 MB.