Issues with booting a restored domain controller?

[christiankelly]

I have a client who only has 2 physical servers one of which is the only DC in the environment. I am using VEB and the DC had issues booting after WSUS updates so we recovered the image to an VMWare temporary server and although the server booted without issues it couldn't be logged into after booting normally as the AD services were not starting. (It worked from safemode/AD restore mode) We tried restoring from different points in time as far back as 90 days. In the end we were able to work with MS to get the physical server going which is good. It then made me wonder if this was a one off issue.

I we have 500 or so servers so I tested restoring a DC from a normal VMWare backup and that booted without issue. I then found another physical DC in our environment and restored it to boot from VMWare and it also would only log in under safe mode not as a normally booted VM.

I know that VEB is not a "supported" product but is this a known issue? And is the forthcoming Windows Endpoint Backup going to fully support AD servers?

Thanks,

[Mike Resseler]

Hi Christian,

Did you follow this? https://www.veeam.com/kb2119

(PS: restoring as far back as 90 days on a standard installed DC is not a good move. I believe the tombstoning is 30 days by default...)

[christiankelly]

Yes this would be case 3 where "Restoring entire AD infrastructure (AKA “all DC’s are lost”)".

But the problem is when recovered from VEB it can't ever boot out of safe mode. Servers backed up through normal Veeam B&R work fine.

Have you been able to boot a AD server backed up from VEB back to a VMWare host in normal mode?

Thanks,

[Dima P.]

Hi christiankelly,

I know that VEB is not a "supported" product but is this a known issue? And is the forthcoming Windows Endpoint Backup going to fully support AD servers?

We received several cases regarding the similar issues, all of them should be resolved in VAW 2.0 Server Edition. Thank you for your post.