A Disaster-Recovery Reference List

Writing a technical column in the wake of last week’s tragedy isn't easy. I send my deepest sympathies to all the individuals and companies who were directly or indirectly affected by this crime against humanity—a crime beyond imagining, beyond words.

As an IT community, we know that hundreds, perhaps thousands of disaster-recovery specialists are working at a frenetic pace to reconstruct the invisible infrastructure that's essential to the transaction of daily commerce. It’s easy to visualize support folks scrambling for hardware, hard disks, cables, switches, working T1 lines, tape drives—a collection that's no doubt less than perfect but will have to do because that’s all there is. I see hundreds of people installing OSs, service packs, and security patches. I see the frustration that results when a newly installed OS crashes or when a firewall blocks needed Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) traffic. I see bleary-eyed caffeine drinkers restoring data with fingers crossed at 4:30 AM.

After thinking it over, I decided that the best contribution I can make this week is to use my research skills to assemble a list of documentation and Microsoft Support Online articles for Windows disaster planning and recovery and to encourage you to develop, test, and regularly revisit your disaster-recovery scenario. Below is my collection—save it and use it, sooner rather than later. The August issue of Windows 2000 Magazine also contains several articles that focus on disaster recovery, including recovery and repair, Active Directory (AD) disaster recovery, and the Recovery Console (RC). I used several of the AD references recently to successfully unwrinkle a Win2K upgrade gone bad, so I can personally vouch for the quality of the information.

AD Disaster Recovery

Windows 2000 Server Documentation

Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit

Microsoft Support Online

Server Disaster Recovery

Microsoft Documentation

NTBackup

Restoring to Alternate Hardware

Cluster Recovery

Encrypted File Recovery

Certificate Authority Recovery

WINS Recovery

DHCP Recovery