A Disaster-Recovery Reference List

Writing a technical column in the wake of last week’s tragedy isn't easy. I send my deepest sympathies to all the individuals and companies who were directly or indirectly affected by this crime against humanity—a crime beyond imagining, beyond words.

As an IT community, we know that hundreds, perhaps thousands of disaster-recovery specialists are working at a frenetic pace to reconstruct the invisible infrastructure that's essential to the transaction of daily commerce. It’s easy to visualize support folks scrambling for hardware, hard disks, cables, switches, working T1 lines, tape drives—a collection that's no doubt less than perfect but will have to do because that’s all there is. I see hundreds of people installing OSs, service packs, and security patches. I see the frustration that results when a newly installed OS crashes or when a firewall blocks needed Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) traffic. I see bleary-eyed caffeine drinkers restoring data with fingers crossed at 4:30 AM.

After thinking it over, I decided that the best contribution I can make this week is to use my research skills to assemble a list of documentation and Microsoft Support Online articles for Windows disaster planning and recovery and to encourage you to develop, test, and regularly revisit your disaster-recovery scenario. Below is my collection—save it and use it, sooner rather than later. The August issue of Windows 2000 Magazine also contains several articles that focus on disaster recovery, including recovery and repair, Active Directory (AD) disaster recovery, and the Recovery Console (RC). I used several of the AD references recently to successfully unwrinkle a Win2K upgrade gone bad, so I can personally vouch for the quality of the information.

AD Disaster Recovery

Windows 2000 Server Documentation

• Chapter 10: Disaster Recovery for Branch Office Environments
• Active Directory Branch Office Guide—Demo 3: Disaster Recovery for Branch Office Environments
• Active Directory Disaster Recovery

Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit

• Chapter 9—Active Directory Backup and Restore
• Chapter 26—Disaster Recovery
• Active Directory Diagnostics, Troubleshooting, and Recovery

Microsoft Support Online

• Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 Disaster Recovery and Backup and Restore Procedures
• How to Perform an Authoritative Restore to a Domain Controller
• Authoritative Restore of Active Directory and Impact on Trusts and Computer Accounts
• Directory Services Do Not Start If Ntds.dit File is Missing
• SYSVOL Directory Is Slow to Synchronize, Delays Creation of SYSVOL Share and Domain Controller Registration
• "Directory Services Cannot Start" Error Message When You Start Computer
• Authoritative Restore of Groups Can Result in Inconsistent Membership Information Across Domain Controllers
• Event 1168: Windows 2000 DCs Unable to Boot into Active Directory
• Troubleshooting Missing SYSVOL and NETLOGON Shares on Windows 2000 DCs
• Using Ntdsutil.exe to seize or Transfer FSMO Roles to a Domain Controller
• How to Troubleshoot the File Replication Service and the Distributed File System
• DCDiag and NetDiag in Windows 2000 Facilitate Domain Join and DC Creation
• Windows 2000 Domain Controllers Restored with System State Backups Made Prior to SP2 May Not Boot
• Backup and Restore of Directory Service on Domain Controller Causes Duplicate SIDs
• Well Known Security Identifiers in Windows 2000

Server Disaster Recovery

Microsoft Documentation

• Windows 2000 Server—Support
• Appendix A—System Recovery and Troubleshooting
• Windows 2000 Server Disaster Recovery Guidelines
• Managing Windows 2000 Disks, Backup, and Restore
• Chapter 12—Backup
• Chapter 13—Repair, Recovery, and Restore
• Chapter 14—Data Backup and Recovery
• Chapter 5—Preparing for and Performing Recovery
• Chapter 6—Backing Up and Restoring Network Files

NTBackup

• How To Back Up and Restore the System State Using Windows 2000 Backup
• How To Restore Data from a Backup Set that Contains a Missing or Corrupted Tape
• NTbackup Cannot Restore from Backup Sets Located on Second Tape in a Continuation Sequence

Restoring to Alternate Hardware

• Restoring a Backup of Windows NT to Another Computer
• How to Restore a Backup to Computer with Different Hardware
• How to Move a Windows 2000 Installation to Different Hardware
• "STOP 0x0000007B" Error After Moving Windows 2000 System Disk to Another System
• Programs Do Not Work After Restoring Computer with Backup
• How to Restore Share Definitions to Another Server

Cluster Recovery

• How to Properly Restore Cluster Information
• Recovering from a Lost or Corrupted Quorum Log
• How to Recover from Event ID 1168 and Event Id 1003
• Recovering from Event ID 1034 on a Server Cluster ()
• Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator Recovery Techniques in Win2k Cluster Server

Encrypted File Recovery

• Recovery of Encrypted Files on a Server
• Transferring Encrypted files That Need to Be Recovered
• How To Restore an Encrypting File System Private Key for Encrypted Data Recovery
• EFS Recovery Agent Cannot Export Private Keys

Certificate Authority Recovery

• Certificate Authority Servers Cannot Be Renamed or Removed from Network
• How to Move a Certification Authority to Another Server

WINS Recovery

• Err Msg: WINS Could Not Come Up Due to Missing/Corrupt
• How to Set Up Disaster Recovery for a Critical WINS Server
• Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) Recovery Techniques in Windows 2000 Cluster Server
• Restoring a Windows 2000 WINS Database from Other Backup Sources

DHCP Recovery

• How to Move a DHCP Database to Another Windows NT Server
• How To Restore a Corrupted DHCP Database File