Recovery Manager for AD Disaster Recovery Edition 10.0.1 - User Guide

Audit of objects and operations

To assist with troubleshooting lost or changed Active Directory objects, AD LDS (ADAM) objects, or Group Policy objects, Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition provides the ability to compare the current state of individual objects in Active Directory or AD LDS (ADAM) with that in an Active Directory or AD LDS (ADAM) backup. This functionality is particularly useful for locating the source of and resolving problems resulting from the deletion or modification of critical objects.

During a restore operation, Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition allows for the creation of comparison reports, which present the changes that have occurred in Active Directory or AD LDS (ADAM) since the last backup, without actually applying changes to Active Directory or AD LDS (ADAM). Such reports show the objects that were deleted or modified since the backup was made. In addition, they show the properties of directory objects and settings of Group Policy objects that would change during the operation. An administrator can then review these changes and decide whether to apply them.

The Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition comparison reports on Active Directory objects can provide information on who (which user account) modified the objects being reported. From version 10.0.1, Recovery Manager for Active Directory restores the deleted object(s) and restores the last change (if any) that was made to the object properties after the backup creation using data from the Change Auditor database. This functionality is based on the auditing capability provided by Change Auditor for Active Directory, an award-winning product that helps to proactively track, audit, report, and alert on vital Active Directory changes—in real time and without the overhead of native auditing.

You can find out more about Change Auditor for Active Directory at

http://quest.com/products/changeauditor-for-active-directory.

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 Recovery Manager for Active Directory 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, textbased 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.

Scheduling and automation

Creation of Backups

Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition enables administrators to schedule the creation of backups. This functionality helps reduce the network workload and can save many hours of the administrators’ valuable time. When scheduling the creation of backups, Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition relies on Task Scheduler—the native Windows scheduler service. A unified graphical interface and wizard assistance provide easy access to the backup scheduling features of Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition.
Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition makes the creation of backups a straightforward task. Once the backup creation options and scheduling are set up, the backup creation process becomes an automatic, unattended operation.

Project Settings Verification

Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition allows the administrators to schedule the forest recovery project verification. This functionality lets you automate the settings verification to ensure that the recovery project is in valid state and can be used for forest recovery.

Scalability and performance

Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition offers scalability and support for large, multi-domain environments. It provides excellent performance, creates backups for multiple computers in parallel, and is easily scalable to service additional domain controllers. Depending on their roles, locations, or other criteria established by an administrator, serviced domain controllers can be logically grouped into easy-to-manage Computer Collections.

Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition employs agents when creating or applying backups. In this way, scalability is improved and overhead network traffic is decreased because agents compress the data before sending it over network links, and create backups for multiple domain controllers in parallel.