Microsoft Corporation

Planning for Active Directory Forest Recovery

Microsoft Corporation

First published: October 2006

Updated and republished: May 2009, March 2010, Feb 2011, May 2011, Sept 2011, April 2013

Abstract

This guide contains best-practice recommendations for recovering an Active Directory® forest if forest-wide failure renders all domain controllers in the forest incapable of functioning normally. The steps, which you must customize for your particular environment, describe how to recover the entire Active Directory forest to a point in time before the critical malfunction. They also ensure that none of the restored domain controllers replicate from a domain controller with potentially dangerous data.

The steps in this guide apply to Active Directory forests where the domain controllers run Microsoft® Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems.

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