System State restores of an Active Directory server fails/hangs while ntds.dit is being restored (81465)

Description:
There are certain considerations and limitations that need to be taken into account when backing up and restoring the System State for Active Directory servers that had their Active Directory files relocated

Symptoms:
A System State restore of an AD server with relocated AD files might hang while trying to restore ntds.dit, or it might fail to bootup after recovery.

On an AD server, one can use the "ntdsutil" utility to relocate the AD files to a different location (e.g. volume). When trying to recover such a backup, the restore process might hang while trying to restore ntds.dit. This is an issue with the 6.x filesystem plugins and has been fixed in plugins 7 and higher, included with NetVault 7.4.5U4 and higher.

Apart from this, when performing disaster recovery for such systems, it is important to keep this in mind. For example, if the system is recovered to different hardware, it also needs to have the drive letter the files have been relocated available, and if there is an AD configuration on that system already, the AD files should be relocated to the new location before starting the restore.

Otherwise, the files will be recovered to the default location of c:\winnt\ntds. This will result in a conflict between the registry information and the actual file location, and it will result in obscure error message like "Insufficient diskspace" when trying to bring up the server. Problems like these can be resolved by rebooting in "Active Directory Services Restore mode" or Safe Mode, and then manually moving the files to the new location in Windows Explorer should resolve this. Using "ntdsutil" -> "files", you should be able to determine from the restored system state where the system *thinks* its files should be and move them there.

BakBone SFDC Solution Number: 00002252