System State and Active Directory
System State is a feature of Windows. Arcserve Backup treats the system files and certain databases as a single entity. A new session named System State is created in addition to the existing sessions that are in Arcserve Backup. System State can be backed up and restored at the same time. The System State consists of the following components.
- Boot and System Protected Files
- Active Directory
- Sys Volume
- COM+ Database
- Cluster Database
- Certificate Server Information
- Registry
Active Directory and Sys Volume are backed up only when the machine is a Domain Controller. The Cluster Database and Certificate server backup only applies when either the cluster server or certificate server are installed.
Backing up System State is done locally. Using the Arcserve Backup Universal Client Agent for Windows, Arcserve Backup is able to backup System State on any machine in the network. Only full backup of System state is supported. There is no incremental or differential backup of System State. Also, restoration of System State can only be done using either the Restore by Tree method or Restore by Session method.
Active Directory
The Active Directory is a directory service that provides a way to allocate user and resource information in the enterprise computing environment. Arcserve Backup can perform a backup of the Active Directory only when the service is online. Restoration of the Active Directory can only be performed in Directory Service Restore mode (in which the Directory Service is offline). There are two ways to restore the Active Directory, authoritative and non authoritative. The default restoration of the Active Directory is non authoritative. If an authoritative restore is preferred, Arcserve Backup has an option to handle it automatically. To invoke this functionality, right-click in the System State session and choose Option. The System State Restore Options dialog appears. Select the check box Make the Restored Copy of the Active Directory Authoritative to make the Active Directory restore authoritative. Your system must be rebooted after the restore job finishes.