Active Directory is the gatekeeper to the network resources your employees depend on, so Active Directory is critical to your business. Accordingly, having a reliable and practiced set of recovery strategies is vital. Preparing for a catastrophic event–l;for example, a hardware failure or physical disaster–is necessary, but so is preparing for "everyday disasters".

This document details important considerations when creating and testing your Active Directory recovery plan. It discusses restoration of data using native tools provided by Microsoft, particularly Ntdsutil.exe, Microsoft's command-line tool for managing Active Directory, including restoring data. The document does not attempt to serve as a comprehensive guide; instead, it provides administrators with important insights into the finer points of Active Directory recovery.