Active Directory replicas or backups

[1-0-1]

I have been browsing the forum concerning setting up replication on Active Directory to DR sites and seeing from all he posts this does not seem to be a well supported function yet. Weather or not this is issue from the Microsoft AD architecture side of things or not does not concern me - but I have picked up from my own tests that I am not able to get a domain controller up and running after a successfull VEEAM replica fail over.

In my case I have two domain controllers of which one is a virtual domain controller. The virtual domain controller has only the Infrastrucutre Role. I am using v5 with all ESXi 4.1 hosts on a iSCSI SAN. My domain controller run Windows 2003 x86 with SP2 and latest patches. The interesting part here is that I cannot log into a domain controller even after following all the numerous steps although I can see that DNS is running (can do a basic DNS name query) and also get an IP via DHCP and can ping the domain controller in the isolated DR network.

I have opened a call also with VEEAM and am currently trying some alternative options. It seems all the post failover replica tasks one has to do makes it actually more worthwhile doing a VEEAM backup and restore of the domain controller?

[Alexey D.]

Hello Bernd,

Please continue working with our support team, because we need to know all your configuration settings, and it's impossible to troubleshoot across the forum.
When replicating, B&R just copies VM's vmdk. After failover things are up to Microsoft - but our team will help you figuring out what happened.

[Gostev]

I have been browsing the forum concerning setting up replication on Active Directory to DR sites and seeing from all he posts this does not seem to be a well supported function yet.

Hmm, what exact posting made you think so?

Weather or not this is issue from the Microsoft AD architecture side of things or not does not concern me - but I have picked up from my own tests that I am not able to get a domain controller up and running after a successfull VEEAM replica fail over.
Please tell us what exactly does not work?

In my case I have two domain controllers of which one is a virtual domain controller. The virtual domain controller has only the Infrastrucutre Role. I am using v5 with all ESXi 4.1 hosts on a iSCSI SAN. My domain controller run Windows 2003 x86 with SP2 and latest patches. The interesting part here is that I cannot log into a domain controller even after following all the numerous steps although I can see that DNS is running (can do a basic DNS name query) and also get an IP via DHCP and can ping the domain controller in the isolated DR network.

Can recovered DC talk to physical DC? Any hints on the problem in replica DC event log?

It seems all the post failover replica tasks one has to do makes it actually more worthwhile doing a VEEAM backup and restore of the domain controller?

There is zero difference between backup and replica, except how and where they are stored...