GOOD, In this document we will see how we can restore our Active Directory backup in case we need it to recover from a catastrophe. To do this,, We will need a backup of the system state (http://www.bujarra.com/?p=1574) or a full copy of the server. This is called performing a non-authoritative restore of Active Directory, since we will not indicate which objects we want it to forcibly replicate to the other domain controllers.

The first thing to restore a backup of Active Directory is to restart the server on the “Directory Services Restore Mode”, is one of the options that we will have whenever we press the F8 key when restarting the server.

With “WBADMIN Get Versions” We will check the backups we have registered in “Windows Server Backups”,

OK, shows us the backups we have,

And select the one we are interested in recovering with the command: “WBADMIN Start SystemStateRecovery -Version:MM/DD/YYYY-HH:MM” Entering the version ID,

“S” to initiate the system state recovery operation…

… We wait a long time while it restores the system state to that date…

And that's it, After a few minutes we will have the server configurations restored to the backup date, Now you just have to restart to check that everything is back to normal.

The restart will be slower than usual as it continues to process the restore results, He informs us that everything is fine, press Enter.