Restore best practice for AWS Backup and Windows domain joined EC2 instances?

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Using AWS Backup to backup and restore Windows 2016 and above EC2 instances which are domain joined to AWS Managed AD. When the instances are restored (as a copy) they appear to retain the same NetBIOS. There will then be two EC2 instances of the same name (different instance IDs) in the same VPC. This has been a problem in the past outside of the cloud.

Any best practices in the community for using AWS Backup and Restore with Windows you can point to?

2 Answers
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Not only that - full image restore will create a domain joined instance with the same GUID which will wreck havoc into your AD. This is not a cloud issue (as you mentioned) but it might be easier to deal with in the cloud since you can perform restore to isolated subnet and then deal with domain membership or even create an image by sysprepping the restored instance

answered 3 years ago
  • I have confirmed that if the instance was domain joined to AWS AD as part of the original launch configuration with a domain role role...when its restored it comes back identically and is part of the domain automatically...with duplicate funness.

    For future posters...any actual references here would be super helpful.

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There are a number of ways to work around these issues. Can you provide more context? As an example, I restored a domain controller (PDC emulator) and didn't have any issues and was up and running in less then 10 minutes.

AWS
answered 3 years ago
  • Imagine you have a legacy application hosted on a Windows Server. Periodically you must bring that whole server back (while its production copy is running in the same VPC with the same NetBIOS name) in order to prove your DR strategy is sound and working. Imagine the application hosts medical records or financial data, and you have to simulate a nurse or accountant using the application for a single user session pulling a patient record like an x-ray, or a trial balance - and you have to prove that said record was intact each time. This all happens at the same time as production is running as stated before.

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