31 Days of our Favorite Things: Active Directory Gremlins? (Part 27 of 31)

Yes, today in our “31 Days of our Favorite Things” series, Matt Hester is talking about Gremlins; specifically, the kinds of nasty things that can happen to an Active Directory domain controller that is virtualized, and when you attempt to restore an old snapshot or a backup of that virtual machine. 

“Ah.. you mean the old ‘Event ID 2095’? The dreaded USN Rollback ?”

Exactly.  AD Replication stops replicating.  Domain controllers stop domain-controlling.  Panic in the streets.  Mass hysteria.  All sorts of not good stuff.

“But, what can be done about it?”

Ah… In Windows Server 2012 we introduce something called the VM-GenerationID attribute.  I’ll let Matt give you all the details, but basically this little item allows a safe restore of an old copy of AD.  It also enables the ability to quickly create new domain controllers as clones of an original virtual machine.  Pretty slick stuff!

READ MATT’S EXCELLENT ARTICLE HERE

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