Chapter 8. Disaster Recovery

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Creating documentation

  • Setting up a response plan

  • Recovery from backup

  • Recovery of key services

Dealing with a failed server is one of the most stressful parts of a system administrator's job. You face the pressures of reinstalling the operating system, recovering valuable data from the backup media, and then reinstalling all the key services needed for the correct operation of the server. Planning for disaster recovery involves a lot more than simply knowing how to operate your restoration software. In this chapter, we show you how to correctly use Automated System Recovery (ASR) to recover a base operating system, as well as best practices for creating and documenting a disaster recovery plan.

Disaster Recovery Planning

Disaster recovery is one of the most important things that you can learn in system administration. Administering a server doesn't mean anything if you can't bring it back to life should something happen to it, such as a catastrophic disk failure or an Active Directory database corruption.

The fine art of disaster recovery not only includes restoring files from a backup device, but also locating potential problems that could lead to a crashed server, restoring services after a reinstallation of the operating system, and a multitude of other duties.

Policy and protocol

The first step in disaster recovery is to define a policy and protocol. The policy should define what happens in what order to get things restored to their normal ...

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