Verifying a Recovery Plan
To minimize downtime during Active Directory forest recovery, it is recommended to regularly verify your Recovery Plan configurations. The following is performed during a Recovery Plan verification:
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NOTE: If the target machine is not provided, the below steps will be completed against the source domain controller. |
- Check connectivity to the Hybrid Agent and Domain Controller Agents.
- Install or upgrade the Domain Controller Agent on a target machine when the Target Server IP has been provided.
- Ensure that the target server has correct OS, drive letters and enough disk space.
- Verify access to the backup from the Domain Controller Agents.
If Recovery Plan has not been verified, all the above steps will take place during the recovery (except that Target Server IP has to be provided for a successful recovery).
To verify a Recovery Plan:
- From the Recovery screen, open the desired Recovery Plan.
- Click Verify Plan. All domain controllers which are not set to Do Not Recover in the Recovery Plan will then be verified. The current status of the verification of each domain controller can be seen in the Status column and the Domain Controller Operations screen. See Domain Controller Operations for more.
Recovering an Environment with a Recovery Plan
Once Recovery Plan verification has been completed successfully, you can proceed with the recovery. See the Verifying a Recovery Plan section for more.
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NOTES:
- It is highly recommended that you visit the Recovery Considerations and Best Practices section in the Before You Start page before you recover an environment.
- Ensure that the Recovery Plan you wish to use for recovery has been created based on the latest forest topology.
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To begin recovery:
- Click on the desired Recovery Plan you wish to use for recovery from the Recovery tab.
- Click Start Recovery, and read the information that is displayed. Confirm that the hybrid machine is configured with a DNS server, and that you want to begin recovery immediately, by checking the corresponding checkboxes. Then click Start Recovery.
All domain controllers in the Recovery Plan that are not set to Do Not Recover will then be recovered. The current status of the recovery of each domain controller can be seen in the Status column and on the Domain Controller Operations screen. See Domain Controller Operations for more.
Domain Controller Operations
By clicking on the status of a domain controller, you can open the Domain Controller Operations screen. This can only be accessed during or after verification or recovery.
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NOTE: If the Recovery Plan has been edited, the Recovery Plan summary and Domain Controller Operations will be cleared and a recovery will need to be performed again to access the status. |
This screen details the operations performed on a domain controller when verifying a Recovery Plan or recovering an environment.
Above the toolbar, you can see the progress of both the domain controller and the Recovery Plan:
- On the left hand side, you can view the status of the domain controller, including the progress of the verification/recovery, how many operations on the domain controller have been completed, are pending, have warnings or have failed.
- On the right hand side, you can view the status of the Recovery Plan, including the overall summary of the Recovery Plan and the overall time taken for the verification/recovery.
You can view the following information for the domain controller on the Domain Controller Operations screen:
- Operations - click on each operation to reveal the domain controller operation details, including details on any actions with warnings or errors.
- Elapsed Time - the duration of time taken for the running of the operation.
- Completion Date - the date and time for when the operation finished running.
On the Domain Controller Operations screen, you can perform the following actions:
- Skip and Continue - Allows you to skip the current failed recovery step for the domain controller you selected and continue the domain controller’s recovery. This action is recommended only if you have manually completed the failed recovery step on the domain controller.
- Retry Last - Allows you to rerun the failed recovery step on the domain controller you selected. This action is recommended when you manually fixed the issue that had caused the recovery step to fail.
- Cancel - Cancels the recovery or verification operation for the selected domain controller.
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Caution: Canceling a verification or recovery operation may result in a corrupt forest. Proceed with caution. |
- View Events - opens the list of events for the domain controller for the latest or currently running task of the Recovery Plan.
Recovery Plan Cards
You can view the Recovery Plans that have previously been created by either clicking All Recovery Plans in the top left hand corner of the Recovery Plan details screen, or by clicking the Recovery tab.
Each card contains the following information:
Status
The Status section shows how your Recovery Plan is processing. Clicking on the status opens up the Task screen filtered by the specific Task ID this status is displaying. The status can include the following:
- New - the Recovery Plan has just been created and has not been ran.
- Verify
- Verify Recovery Plan in Progress - verification of the Recovery Plan is in progress.
- Last Successful Verify Recovery Plan - the time of the last successful verification of the Recovery Plan.
- Verify Recovery Plan Canceling - the verification of the Recovery Plan is in the process of being canceled.
- Verify Recovery Plan Canceled - the verification of the Recovery Plan has been canceled.
- Verify Recovery Plan Failed - the time of the last failed verification of the Recovery Plan.
- Verification Paused - the verification has been paused.
- Recovery
- Recovery in Progress - the Recovery Plan is in the process of recovering the environment.
- Last Successful Recovery - the time of the last successful recovery of the environment.
- Recovery Canceling - the recovery of the Recovery Plan is in the process of being canceled.
- Recovery Canceled - the recovery of the Recovery Plan has been successfully canceled.
- Recovery Failed - the time of the last failed recovery of the Recovery Plan.
- Recovery Paused - the recovery has been paused.
Summary
The Summary section shows an overview of the configuration of your Recovery Plan. This includes the following information:
- Recovery Method - the primary method of recovery used in the Recovery Plan.
- Selected Domains - the total number of domains in the forest and how many of those domains which were selected for the recovery.
- Number of DCs - the number of domain controllers in the domains selected for recovery in the Recovery Plan.
With the Recovery Plan cards, you can perform the following actions:
