Disaster Recovery

[Randall Dixon]

We're running NDS4NT and recently migrated a NT PDC server to new hardware.
In doing this we found that if a NIC card fails or changes our NT server is
inaccessible.
Scenario:

1. NIC card in NT 4.0 Server is replaced or fails.

2. The new NIC card is not identical to the old NIC.

3. Boot the Server and try to login. Since the NIC card isn't configured
NDS is not available and we can't login to the NT Server to configure the
new NIC.

Hum. catch 22. In a Disaster Recovery (DR) scenario this would render this
NT server useless.

Has anyone run into this and know a solution or work around?

We are up and running on the new NIC but we're trying to figure out what we
would do in a DR situation.

[Vikas Mahajan]

Randall,

NDS4NT automatically caches the administrator account and password. If
you wait about 15 minutes, you should be able to login with
administrator, get the NIC configured, reboot, and be back in business.

Another option is to backup the Novell samsrv and replace it with the
Microsoft one temporarily. This will let you login to NT with any
accounts that existed before you installed NDS4NT was installed.

Some TIDS to check out:

10013073
2937215
10015331

Good Luck,
--
Vikas Mahajan
Novell Support Connection Volunteer SysOp

[-H-]

Recently my PDC took a dive, and instead of restoring from backup I
reinstalled NT 4 after promoting my BDC to a PDC. My original PDC
(different SID due to reinstall of OS) is back in place with all its
prior services (dhcp, WINS etc.) restored successfully, however NDS for
NT is not functioning properly. Prior to the crash, both my PDC and
BDC had the NDS for NT client, but after reading the only TID covering
this topic, I realize that in order to use NDS4NTER, my PDC must use
its original SID.

My question:

Is there any method of relinking NDS for NT w/o using NDS4NTER, and
secondly, if I attempt to restore the PDC's original SID, won't that
affect my domain and/or the functionality of the PDC and its running
services? Is my only option a NDS for NT reinstall? As you can see,
the ramifications of a SID change on my functioning PDC is my concern.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
-h-

* Sent from Novell Discussion Forums http://novell.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!

[Vikas Mahajan]

H,

If you restored the crashed PDC as a BDC (that is to say, you
re-installed NT from scratch and setup the server to be a BDC), it will
inherit the domain SID from the "new" PDC since the domain is alive and
well on that machine (that is the BDC you promoted to PDC when the
original PDC crashed).

The other recovery option is to use the NT ERD, which also preserves the
all-important domain SID, in conjunction with NDS4NTER. Once the ERD
restores the SID, NDS4NTER will look for the nds4nt.dat file and
re-establish the link to the domain object if the domain SID on the
server matches the domain SID on the domain object in NDS.