Creating Backup Test Network

[WaferITMan]

I would like to setup a test network for testing new software and upgrades.

We recently updated to Win2k3 active directory with 2 DC's. In the past winNT network I was able to create a backup domain controller move it to my test network and upgrade as a primary domain controller.

I am not sure what is the best way to do this on a active directory system.

Please advise.

Thank you.

 

[wdoellefeld]

I did this successfully not to long ago. It is a bit heavy in the manual removal of objects but it's the only way to get an EXACT copy unless you have a spare server with the same hardware as one of your DCs. Doing a recover to different hardware is darn near impossible from my experience although MS says it can be done. Here is the article about it;

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263532

This is what I did:
Added a workstation to my domain and promoted it up as a DC (it didn't assume any roles since it was the latest of 3 DCs). Let it replicate on the initial promotion and then let it sit for about 3 hours. Took it off the wire and forced a DC removal using ntdsutil (all this does was remove the NTDS settings). Deleted the DC in the site (sites and services). The DC was still listed in the domain controllers OU and couldn't be deleted (DSA error). I used ADSI Edit to finish up and remove the object.

In the new dev network I did the same as the above to clean up including seizing all the roles then adding DNS, DHCP, and WINS.



FRCP

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