After all, we had backups.

"Active Directory backups don't work. Additional domain controllers do."

Uh, no. Learn from me, young Skywalker. Make sure you have at least one additional domain controller and it's actively syncing with the primary controller. This way, if your primary controller goes down, you don't need to restore from backups. Instead, you switch to the other controller, build a new controller, and resync.

Read my words: Active Directory backups don't work. Additional domain controllers do. Had we had an additional domain controller, much of the Hell would have been avoided.

Oh, while we're on this topic, here's another tip. We ran Exchange on said single domain controller. So when it went down, it all went down. Make sure Exchange is on one machine, and your two (remember why you need two?) domain controllers are on separate machines. That way, you're not trying to both restore Exchange and your Active Directory all together in one place. Like I had to. Which was Hell.

Let's recap:

• Make sure you have two domain controllers;
• Make sure you have Exchange on a machine that is not a domain controller;
• Use something other than Windows backup to make backups, because old backups expire.

As soon as I can bring myself to face this story again, I'll tell you more.

Product availability and resources To learn more about the 60-day useful life of backups, visit http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;216993&Product=win2000.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and can be reached via email at david@zatz.com.