Windows Domain questions from a unix nerd

Hi all,
For the past year or so I've been getting alot of windows work. I've gone through an MCSE course and I'm planning to take the tests soon. I have a customer that wants me to build them a backup server for disaster recovery. I have a few ideas but I wanted to bounce them off of people that are actually in the field. One of the things I've learned is that real world experience is usually much different than what book say.

Customer is running win2k3 SBS with exchange. They are running a domain.
Backus are Acronis images borken up into c (system) d (DATA) and a full system image.

I built the second server and will be re-installing the win2k3 software on it.

win2k3 SBS cannot be set up as a secondary domain controller so i have to make it its own domain.

both servers must have some kind of connectivity so that current images from the main server can be copied to the secondary server.

Goal: To have the secondary server replace the primary in the event the primary server is damaged beyond repair.

Questions:
If I make the secondary server a different domain then in order for people to access it they would have leave the original domain [DOMAIN1] and log into the secondary domain [domain2] The first problem that I see with this is that on the XP office machines another user would be created with a new profile. All of the user data would have to be moved to the new profile (outlook, my documents and desktop) and then when the primary domain came back online all of the data would then have to be moved again. From what I've read the reason that this occurs is the the SIDS/RIDS are not the same. Is there any way around this? Can the SIDS/RIDS be moved to the new server?

If the SIDS/RIDS can be moved then could I use the MS domain rename tool to rename DOMAIN2 on the secondary server to DOMAIN1 thus keeping the XP clients from creating another user profile when they log into the secondary server?

Could I make the secondary server's domain the same name as whats in use now and just put it on a different IP address? I have 2 nic's in the primary server and could always change the ip address on one so that there is a second network. If i did this would the two domains see each other.

One option that I have not tried yet is to restore the system image of the production server to the secondary server. The MB's are similar (the secondary's MB is the upgrade to the MB in the production server, which is EOL'd by intel) They are close and use the same chipset but I'm not sure how windows will react. I plan to test this this week. I'll let you all know what happens.

If anybody out there has any ideas on different solutions please feel free to post.

thanks in advance for any help

i have a SBS setup and it is sadly limited in what you can do in the domain area, as it expects everything to be on the same server (eg. exchange, dns etc)

have you thought about changing the users over to roaming profiles so they are stored on the server as well, so would be brought back with the backup?

i would seriously test the backups.....i could not get my backup to reload back onto the same server, let alone another one.....SBS is one hell of a inter-dependant peice of software!

sorry not a lot of help, i have thought about this problem, and decided to not to go with it....i have instead, moved all of my live work onto another server (NAS), and put enough backups in place that i try not to worry, if it all goes wrong i will format and start from scratch, because i think the chances of it going back in 1 go is very slim

have you thought about some sort of failover system, i think the latest version of backup-exec can be upgraded to do this

lee

thanks for the reply. I keep 1 week of Acronis images available on disks at all times. I also have tape backups in offsite storage. I've used the Acronis images to restore the data drives multiple times (that load as a diskdrive rocks). I've had nothing but problems with backup exec so unless the customer already has it installed I don't use it.

What I'm trying to acomplish is the easy transition from one server to another incase of a failure of the main server.

Using a different domain name will cause nothing but problems I think. What I would do is make regular ASR backups on the primary server. For the backup I think you can make an image prepared with sysprep first to be sure it's working on the newer hardware.

Worst I have ever dealt with is a software problem on exchange that required a re-install. Fortunately this was accomplished with Exchange setup and required no Exchange database rebuild from backup. I hear time and time again that people can make backups but 50% of those fail to be able to actually restore them when needed. That is certainly something that you should test.

thanks again for the reply.

The company needs seperate hardware. It's part of their compliance for disaster recovery. The reason that I want both PC's online at the same time is so I can transfer the images. With both servers online I should be able to hold 2-3 weeks of images online at one time. It would make it faster to recover then reading from tape. I will be testing the restore of the image from one server to the other this week.

The reason that I wanted the other domain is incase the image restore from the priamry server does not work. I could always set up the secondary server ahead of time and then just restore the data directory.

they are not currently using the exchange server. I'm not sure if that would help or hurt the backup procedure.

Seems like you could have DNS distinguishing both machines as server1.domain.local and server2.domain.local. You would need gigabit crossover between the machines for backup on dedicated NICs (or whatever method you chose). From there you could have a snapshot from the PDC copied on the failover, and have DNS reroute to the failover if the PDC dies.

I have never dealt with this personally, but just throwing out some ideas. This would keep AD intact though.

Is there any reason that you absolutely must be using SBS on both servers? If you just switched the backup to Server 2003 Standard you would make things much easier on yourself. I have a domain setup just like that with no problems at all. The SBS is the PDC machine, but everything is automatically replicated to the Server 2003 machine (well DNS and AD stuff anyway, user files are another story but it can be setup easy enough). If either machine goes down the other will take over automatically, and the end user will never know. Then, if it was the PDC that went down, when it comes back up it will take over again.

Another option, if you must use SBS on both, is to just not run the scripts that promote the second server to PDC. This way it will just be a member of the domain, and you can copy any backups to it and whatever else you need. Then just make sure you have an up to date copy of the AD files, and in the even of a failure manully promote the other server, and copy in the AD accounts. I have never tried it myself, but it would probably be easier than trying to work over multiple domains.