Hello Experts,
I am in doubt with respect to take AD snap shot or Clone for the test lab. I have written it bit lengthy and please go through it.
In our production environment, AD DS is running on Windows Server 2008 R2 (VM Boxes) and I have been asked to provide a replica of “Production AD” for internal testing.
I have a feeling that I could do this by easily creating a "Test user account" and grant Admin access (well, the testing is based with edit schema so will add the account in Schema admin and enterprise admin group, and take copy of schema role DC. I will then wait for replication to complete and will remove the test account once the AD snap shot has been taken )
But of course I did searching but had end up with different suggestion, as some mention that AD backup image is the best choice because of USN roll back occur while copying the AD.
My concerns are numbered below, correct me if I am wrong and please provide expert advice respectively.
1, I don't think USN roll back make any issue here , since this snap shot or clone of root DC is going to be used purely in the test lab.
2, I will install new blank VM and map the AD clone (Will make sure that it will be in different switch /VLAN)
3, I believe that I can able to login clone /snap shot DC with newly created test account after connected to virtual switch ( It shouldn’t connect to production ) and DNS on schema master is pointing to its own IP address , so AD can query with proper SRV records in DNS.
This ends with copy of AD for test Lab queries and next is
4, Total different option and I been heard that restoring from AD ( Windows Image ) is the best approach to create an test lab, but I think it would take more effort as I need to convert the Image ( VHD ) to VMDK ( VMware ) first and also search for some bootable CD, since backup image will not have bootable files.
At the end, I would like to know what is the best approach to have an Replica of "Production DC" for internal testing. Thanks in advance for the valuable suggestions.
Rahul