Dell EMC Avamar for Windows Servers 19.7 User Guide

Restoring Active Directory

1. In Avamar Administrator, click the Backup & Restore tab.
   The Backup, Restore and Manage window appears.
2. In the domain tree, select the domain for the client.
3. From the list of clients, select the original client.
4. Click the Restore tab.
5. Click the By Date tab.
6. In the calendar, select the date on which the backup occurred.
7. Select the backup from the Backups table to the right of the calendar.
8. In the lower-left pane, expand the tree and select System State > BootableSystemState.
9. In the lower-right pane, select the checkbox next to Active Directory.
10. Select Actions > Restore Now.
    The Restore Options dialog box appears.
11. If you are restoring from a replicate server, select the client for the restore:
    1. Select Restore everything to a different location.
    2. In the Restore Destination Client dialog box, select Browse.
    3. In the Browse for Restore Client dialog box, select the client and click OK.
    4. In the Items Marked for Restore dialog box, click Set Destination.
       The Set Destination dialog box appears.
    5. Click Browse.
    6. In the Browse for File, Folder, or Directory dialog box, expand Windows VSS and select System State as shown in the following figure.
    7. Click OK to return to the Restore Options dialog box.
12. Click More Options.
    The Restore Command Line Options dialog box appears.
13. Click More to view the attribute data entry fields.
14. In the Enter Attribute box, type the following value:
    --[avvss]allow_partial_system_state
15. In the Enter Attribute Value box, type the following value:
    true
    NOTE Use the --[avvss]allow_partial_system_state option only for an online restore of Active Directory. Never use this option for an online restore of other System State components.
16. Click + to add the attribute.
17. Click OK on the Restore Command Line Options dialog box.
18. Click OK on the Restore Options dialog box.
    The Restore Request dialog box indicates that the restore started.
19. Click Close.
20. Wait for the restore to complete.
21. Select whether to perform a nonauthoritative restore or an authoritative restore:
    • To perform a nonauthoritative restore, restart the client normally after the Active Directory restore completes. Other domain controllers replicate changes to the client after the restart.
    • To perform an authoritative restore, continue to the next step. In the authoritative restore, the data from the restored domain controller replicates to other domain controllers.
22. For an authoritative restore only, open a command prompt window and use the ntdsutil utility to mark objects for the authoritative restore.

    The objects replicate to other domain controllers during the authoritative restore. In addition, replication partners do not overwrite the replicated objects.

    You can mark a single user object, an entire user subtree, containers, or the entire database.

    You can use Microsoft ADSIEdit to display Distinguished Names for AD objects.

    For example, the following series of commands marks a user with an OU of CN=Test User,CN=Users,DC=svr1,DC=mydomain,DC=com for an authoritative restore:

    ntdsutil
    activate instance NTDS
    authoritative restore
    restore object
    “CN=Test User,CN=Users,DC=svr1,DC=mydomain,DC=com”
    quit
    quit

    The Microsoft documentation provides details on using the ntdsutil utility for an authoritative restore.

23. If you used Windows System Configuration to configure the system to boot into DSRM, use Windows System Configuration again and clear the Safe boot checkbox to enable the system to return to normal booting.
24. Restart the client.