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To determine if your backup of Active Directory is good then there are two things you must consider:

Technorati Tags: system state , ad backup , active directory disaster recovery

1. Age of Backup
2. Contents of the Backup

Age of Backup

If your backup is older than the Active Directory tombstone age setting, then it is not considered to be a good backup.

If you are not already aware, the tombstone is a representation of an object that has been deleted but not fully removed from AD. The tombstone will eventually be removed based on the tombstone lifetime setting, which by default is set to 60 days. If a domain controller is restored to a state prior to the deletion of an object, and the tombstone for that object is not replicated to the restored DC before the tombstone expires, the object remains present only on the restored DC, resulting in an inconsistency.

Contents of the Backup

A good Active Directory backup must include the following:

1. A copy of the System Disk
2. A copy of SYSVOL folder if located on a disk other than the system disk
3. System State

Active DirectoryActive Directory

Filed under: Active Directory