Jon,

I'm sure there are a number of pros and cons and I'll let others chime in
... one advantage of having a backup of the Active Directory on a given DC
is time to recovery. While you can bring an active directory back by
simply installing it and letting it synchronize to "catch-up" to the rest
of the organization, this synchronization can take quite a long time
depending on the size of the directory.  In this case, a backup product
can give you a point-in-time copy of the active directory such that the
synchronization process only has to "catch-up" from a time in the recent
past.  The time to restore from a tape can be much quicker then doing a
synchronization from ground-zero.

Jim

J.P. (Jim) Smith
TSM Client Development


Here's an interesting question:  why would you want to backup a DC,
especially where you have a DC (W2K) or two in every remote site of the
WAN?
Why/what would you ever restore that you wouldn't get from the other
domain
controllers if one or even a few are down?

I ask this because my theory is "when in doubt, backup it up".  At a
couple
hundred dollars a license it seems a reasonable assurance policy
(depending
on the budget, of course).  Another theory applies here as well, "backup
everything, exclude only as needed, even if that client options set gets
pretty big".

____________________________________________
Jon R. Adams
IT IPS BST Infrastructure
Premera Blue Cross
Mountlake Terrace, WA
425-670-5770
jon.adams AT premera DOT com