Backing Up and Restoring Active Directory

The Microsoft® Active Directory™ provides functions for backing up and restoring data in the directory database. This section describes how to back up and restore Active Directory programmatically. For information about backing up Active Directory using the utilities provided in Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server, see the Windows 2000 Resource Kit.

Backup of Active Directory must be performed online and must be performed when the Active Directory Service is installed. Active Directory is built on a special Jet database and exports a backup interface similar to Microsoft Exchange 5.5. The primary difference is that Active Directory does not support incremental backups. A backup application binds to a local client-side DLL with entry points defined in ntdsbcli.h.

Restoration of Active Directory is always performed offline.

Although the topics in this section only describe how to back up and restore Active Directory, note that Windows 2000® has several "system state" components that must be backed up and restored together. These system state components consist of the following:

• Boot files including ntldr, ntdetect, all files protected by SFP, and performance counter configuration
• The Active Directory (domain controller only)
• SysVol (domain controller only)
• Certificate server (CA only)
• Cluster database (cluster node only)
• Registry
• COM+ class registration database

The system state can be backed up in any order. Restoration of the system state should replace boot files first and commit the system hive of the registry as the final step just before running the DsRestore* functions on the domain controller.

For information on restoring Certificate Services, see Using the Certificate Services Backup and Restore Functions.

For more information on the Microsoft Exchange backup and restore interface, see Backing Up and Restoring Data in the Microsoft Exchange Server Programmer's Reference.