Recovery Manager for AD 10.3 - User Guide

Using Management Shell

• About Management Shell

About Management Shell

The Recovery Manager for Active Directory Management Shell, built on Microsoft Windows® PowerShell® technology, provides a command-line interface that enables automation of backup/recovery-related administrative tasks. With this Management Shell, administrators can manage Computer Collections, backup/recovery sessions, compare and start backup/recovery jobs.

The Management Shell command-line tools (cmdlets), like all the Windows® PowerShell® cmdlets, are designed to deal with objects—structured information that is more than just a string of characters appearing on the screen. The cmdlets do not use text as the basis for interaction with the system, but use an object model that is based on the Microsoft .NET platform. In contrast to traditional, text-based commands, the cmdlets do not require the use of text-processing tools to extract specific information. Rather, you can access portions of the data directly by using standard Windows® PowerShell® object manipulation commands.

For a list of all available PowerShell® commands, see the Management Shell Guide supplied with this release of the product.

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 Recovery Manager Console. This tool is called Diagnostic Data Collector.

When gathering diagnostic data, the Diagnostic Data Collector collects the following:

• From Recovery Manager Console machine

  • Collects the Recovery Manager Console log

  • Collects the Recovery Manager for Active Directory event logs

  • .db3 database files

  • Recovery Manager for Active Directory configuration files

• 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 RMAD 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.

Step 1: Use Diagnostic Data Collector to automatically gather data

To automatically gather diagnostic data

1. In the Recovery Manager Console, right-click the computer collection or the domain controller from the right-pane and select Collect diagnostic data… from the shortcut menu.

2. If you need to collect diagnostic data for the Recovery Manager Console machine, right-click on the Console root and select Collect diagnostic data….

3. Use the Drop folder text box to specify the local or UNC path to the folder where you want to save the diagnostic data to be collected. The collected data is saved to a .zip file, e.g. CollectedLogs_10_20_2015 07_23_25.zip

4. Specify credentials to access the domain controllers.

5. Select the Delete collected logs from domain controllers option to delete collected RMAD\RMADFE logs from domain controllers.

6. Click the Collect button and wait for the operation to complete.

If you successfully collected data, you can submit the .zip file to Quest technical support. Otherwise, complete Step 2: Gather remaining data manually.