Install SBS 2003 in existing domain with the other server out of commission?

[grimly fiendish]

I am by no means qualified to do this, but at the small business I work at, I am most qualified and the company is quite strapped for cash.

We had a Dell Poweredge 1600SC server running SBS 2003; HAD because the IT company we contracted kept very poor care of the server. Something happened and enough RAID drives got put out of commission that we couldn't do anything with it. They are refusing the blame and we don't have the money for a prolinged lawsuit.

We performed a manual backup of all the data from the hard drives onto a USB drive which was performed a few weeks before "The Day that Shall Not Be Forgotten".

We have a brand new Dell Poweredge T300 sitting in a box in the storage room.

Is there any resource that could show me how to recreate the domain on a new server without disturbing any of the clients? Is it possible?(Keeping in mind I have the data from the old server on a USB drive).

I'm in quite a jam as there are some very expensive software products on our clients that we can't afford to lose.

Any direction as to how to handle this would be VERY welcomed -- --

I also hope I'm posting this to the correct forum. If not, I apoligize and will repost to the correct forun.

 

[Sagan :]]

Is there any resource that could show me how to recreate the domain on a new server without disturbing any of the clients?

Nope sorry, you will need to have all the clients disjoin the old domain, and join the new domain created with the SBS server. You can easily copy the profile back once the new accounts logon, and the clients will look and behave exactly like they did before, with all the apps working the same, but it's a just a little bit of work.

 

[grimly fiendish]

Thank you very much for the advice.

That's definately an answer I'm happy to hear.

 

[Pangenitor]

Do you have a full backup created with the SBS backup task in the Server Management (i.e. an NTbackup file with System State, Exchange Databases, Files, etc)? If so, you can restore that to the new hardware and have your domain as it was before. There's a few gotchas to look out for in this process but it's worked for me in the past.

If you just copied (e.g. drag and dropped to the USB drive) all your files and folders off the server then, as Sagan says, you're looking at a bit more work.

 

[PlaZNiNe]

You might want to look at Acronis Universal Restore. This can save you a ton of time if your looking to move from one device to another.

-9

 

[The ToOTaLL]

Originally posted by Grimly Fiendish:
I am by no means qualified to do this, but at the small business I work at, I am most qualified and the company is quite strapped for cash.

No offense, but being an IT consultant myself it's reasons like this that companies get themselves into situations that you're in now. Individuals who haven't made a profession of IT being forced into IT can cause far more damage than good, especially when their employers are too cheap to hire reliable help (which you've made it apparent because of the poor support they had). Unless you're proficient with Windows server and AD, you need to be up front with them and tell them to find someone who is or risk digging themselves into a deeper hole than they're in now.

It's going to be a tough pill to swallow, but unless you have a full backup of the server (System State, etc) then you're going to have to rebuild the domain from scratch, disjoin your PCs from the "dead" domain, and join them to the rebuild domain. I've got an article I've written (http://memphistech.net/articles/sid.html) that gives you an idea on how to preseve your old user profile once you've moved it to the new domain. Finally, it's the arduous task of putting data back where it was before, plus working with vendors to reconfigure application packages.

Most companies who have to live through an incident like this learn some valuable lesson the hardware, primarily having a good backup, ensuring you get a backup, and testing your backup. Online backup is an easy alternative to tape or hard drive rotations, plus once you set your schedule you can let it do its thing, apart from monthly or quarterly test.

Just remember, it's easy to try and pass blame on the IT consultant, but when you're onsite day in and day out, it's not their responsibility to do things such as rotate tapes, check the backup, etc unless you're paying them to do so.