Sandbox for 2 DCs for testing

[Moebius]

I have an AD domain with 2 Win2022 DCs that I obtained by migrating two old Win2012R2 DCs, now demoted and removed.

The SYSVOL replication does not work as it should, and I would like to follow one of the many articles that can be found on the net on this subject. All of them involve manipulation of the objects with the ADSI editor, and warn to have a good backup in place as the operation could possibly mess up the Directory.

So I would like to try this procedure in a sandbox. I can easily instant restore the two DCs on an isolated network, but the problem seems that when I instant-recover the vms Veeam goes through the non-authoritative restore for both of them. Basically if I get this straight each DC wants to restore the directory from the other one, which seems to me to lead to a point where there is no authoritative domain controller in my 2-vm network.

How can I avoid the automated AD restore altogether and just boot the instant-recovered DCs as they had just been switched off?

[Mildur]

Hi Lucio

You could create a virtual lab with an application group. In the application group, you can configure one DC as Domain Controller (Authoritative Restore) and the second one as Domain Controller (Non-Authoritative Restore).

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Configure a SureBackup Job and let the application group running after the SureBackup Job completes:
--> Option "Keep the application group running after the job completes".
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Best,
Fabian

[Moebius]

Thanks Fabian. Unfortunately here I have a standard license, so I cannot leverage SureBackup.
I am creating a virtual lab manually, using an isolated vSwitch and instant-recovering the DCs on it.

What if I create a separate backup job just for the test and back up the two DCs without application-aware processing, and use that backup for instant recovery? This way it should not go through the AD restore and reboots and so on, and just power on the DCs without interference. Am I wrong?