Environments
Upon the creation of your environment, information about your Active Directory environments can be found on the Environments screen. Each tile on the Environments screen displays the following information:
The Status section displays information on the status of a current or latest discovery, backup, verification and recovery of the environment. For more information on the individual statuses, go to the Recovery Plan Cards page.
The Forest Summary section shows the number of domains and domain controllers (DCs) in the environment. Click View Topology to see more details.
The Hybrid Agent section presents the FQDN of the Hybrid Agent, as well as if the Hybrid Agent is both connected and online. For more on Hybrid Agents, including how to add a Hybrid Agent, refer to the Managing your Microsoft Entra tenants and on-premises domains section in the On Demand Global Settings User Guide. You can configure the agent by selecting Manage Agent.
The DC Agents section presents if the Domain Controller Agent(s) associated with the environment is online. You can download the agent package by clicking Download Agent. For more on Domain Controller Agents, either click About Agents or go to the About Domain Controller Agents and Hybrid Agents section in the Before You Start page.
On the Environments screen, you can perform the following actions:
- Add Environment - create an environment for the tenant. For more information, click go to the Creating and Configuring an Environment section.
- About Agents - this will show more information on Hybrid Agents and Domain Controller Agents. Click Hybrid Agents to manage your Hybrid Agent.
On each environment card, you can perform the following actions:
- Edit - edit the environment to change its environment name, associated Hybrid Agent, credentials used to perform topology discovery and agent proxy settings.
- Remove - remove the environment from Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory.
Creating and Configuring an Environment
To use Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory, you will need to add an environment, which will include your Active Directory forest.
An environment needs to be created in Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory for every Active Directory forest you plan to be able to backup and restore. Environments are isolated from each other; each environment will have its own topology, agent management, Backup Plans, and Recovery Plans. If you have multiple production forests you want to backup and recover, each of them need to be added individually into the product.
Each environment also needs to have its own Hybrid Agent to facilitate communication between the product and on-premises Domain Controller Agents. It is highly recommended to regularly perform test recoveries in your test environment using the product to ensure it will work for you as expected in a production environment in case of a disaster. To perform recovery in your test environment, backups from the test environment need to be performed (you cannot use production backups in your test environment).
In this section:
Creating and Installing a Hybrid Agent
Before you create an environment in Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory, a Hybrid Agent will need to be installed on-premises. A Hybrid Agent is used to securely communicate with any installed on-premises Domain Controller (DC) agents. To facilitate communication with your environment, a Hybrid Agent must be manually installed on-premises. To do this:
- Log in to On Demand using the credentials you used to sign up for On Demand.
- In the navigation panel on the left, click Tenants.
- Click Hybrid Agents.
- Click Add agent.
When you click Add Agent, the How to Add an Agent screen is displayed. You must create a passphrase that will be used when you install the agent.
- To create a passphrase, use one of the following options:
- Click Generate New to get a new passphrase.
- Enter a passphrase manually. The passphrase can be from 4 to 100 words (32 to 1024 characters long).
- Edit a displayed passphrase to make it more complex (such as adding numbers or characters).
- Enter a passphrase word count (from 4 to 100 words) and click Generate New to get a passphrase of the specified word count. NOTE: The passphrase must be from 32 to 1024 characters long.
- When you decide to use the displayed passphrase, click Copy and Continue.
- Once the installation package is ready, click Download. The agent package with a unique key is downloaded to your computer.
- Copy the agent package to the server and double-click the AgentSetup.exe file. Go to the Adding an on-premises agent section in the On Demand Global Settings User Guide for more information.
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NOTE: The maximum number of Hybrid Agents is limited to 10 per On Demand organization. If you need a higher number of Hybrid Agents, contact Quest Support. |
- Install the agent by following the prompts in the command line. The copied passphrase will need to be provided.
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NOTE: The Recovery for Active Directory action is added automatically once the Hybrid Agent is selected for the Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory environment. The action remains on the Hybrid Agent even if the Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory environment have been deleted or has stopped using the Hybrid Agent. |
For more on Hybrid Agent installation, refer to the Managing your Microsoft Entra tenants and on-premises domains section in the On Demand Global Settings User Guide.
Creating a Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory Environment
You can then create an environment within Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory. To do this:
- On the Disaster Recovery for Identity for Active Directory Environments screen, click Add Environment.
- Enter the environment name. This is a unique name to identify the environment.
- Select the Hybrid Agent you created from the drop down menu.
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NOTES:
- Agents that have already been assigned to other environments will not be populated in this drop down menu.
- Only a single Hybrid Agent per environment is currently supported.
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- Enter the Active Directory domain username and password which will be used to discover Active Directory domains and domain controllers.
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NOTES:
- The entered domain\username should at least have forest-wide read permissions.
- When using a standalone agent, provide the domain FQDN\username.
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- Specify proxy configuration used by all Domain Controller Agents within the environment to upload and download the backups. You can use one of the following options:
- Use system proxy configuration. This is selected by default and will use proxy settings configured on the machine to get Internet access.
- Use a manually configured proxy. Specify the server address and port in the relevant boxes.
- Click Save. Once a new environment is created, open the Topology screen to run a discovery of your Active Directory forest.
