How to Backup Active Directory Fully in Windows Server 2016?

Managing network is a critical task in the networking world but not much tough with active directory. The Active Directory was first time introduced in Windows Server 2000 for centralized domain management. Before the active directory, Microsoft had added tools to manage users, computers but they were not as efficient as active directory. The Active Directory Services (AD DS) or directly Active Directory (AD) is the repository of management and information. You can manage and have information of every type of information about users, computers, services. Also, it offers excellent services like load balancing, failover cluster. As much as it’s affected that much, you need just to make it relevant and take care of it means you need to take backup of the active directory if someone accidentally delete something or being hacked. Therefore, if the domain controller stops working, you should be able to restore the data back. Don’t worry, because we have the every solution of your problem, let’s move on and do it now.

Backup Active Directory in Windows Server 2016

The Active directory backup is not much involved. Indeed, you can learn and do it easily.

First of all, you need to install the Windows Backup Server, using Server Manager.

1. Open Server Manager, click on Add roles and features, skip the Welcome page clicking on Next button, then select the server you want to install the backup server on, click on Next button. It is not the role; it is a feature, skip the select Server Roles page. In the feature page, scroll down and check the Windows Server Backup, hit Next!

2. In the Confirm installation selections page, click on Install button. Take a rest, because it takes a while, no reboot is needed.

3. Now on the Server Manager, click on Tools, then click on Windows Server Backup at the end of the list to open the server.

4. Now the server backup is opened, click on backup once. If you like to make a schedule for active directory backup, so click on Backup schedule.

5. Select Different options, click on Next button because Different options are used while we don’t have any schedule for backup.

6. On the Select backup configuration page, two options are available, Full Server and Custom. We just want to take backup of the active directory, so we choose the second option.

7. In the Select items for the backup page, click on Add items button, select system state option and click on Ok button. so you are done here, hit next!

8. It is the time to decide where to restore the backup files, Local drives or shared folder; I choose the local drive.

9. In the Select backup destination page, the place for backup files restoration is specified.

10. We are done, so click on the Backup button, take a rest. Let the server do its work.

Conclusion

Ok, hope it was informative and helpful, to restore the Active Directory backup, follow our next article covering restoring active directory’s backup.