samba - Sep 2022 - DC Cloning

On 13/09/2022 21:52, David Wells - Alfavinil S.A. via samba
wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I'm trying to clone a samba 4.10.8 AD DC that is running on a server in
> my production network into a fully isolated VM where I'm installing an 
> updated fresh copy of the os which has samba 4.15.9 with the same IP 
> address and hostname as the production server has. My plan was to make 
> an offline backup of the DC and restore this backup in the new DC but I 
> found the documentation that states "Similar to doing a provision, you
> need to specify a new DC when you run the restore command. This new DC 
> must not have existed previously in the Samba network". Is there a way
> to restore a backup into a server without having to rename it?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> Best regards,
> David Wells.
Sorry to be a bit late in replying, but I cannot recommend doing this. 
If you have running DC's, then just join a new DC. If you require 
backups, you should backup the domain with samba-tool and then use that 
backup if you get a catastrophic failure. AD is constantly changing and 
if you use a snapshot, you can re-introduce incorrect changes back into 
AD, because the 'cloned' DC will replicate to all other DC's.

Rowland

El 19/9/2022 a las 05:30, Rowland Penny via samba
escribi?:
>
>
> On 13/09/2022 21:52, David Wells - Alfavinil S.A. via samba wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> I'm trying to clone a samba 4.10.8 AD DC that is running on a
server
>> in my production network into a fully isolated VM where I'm 
>> installing an updated fresh copy of the os which has samba 4.15.9 
>> with the same IP address and hostname as the production server has. 
>> My plan was to make an offline backup of the DC and restore this 
>> backup in the new DC but I found the documentation that states 
>> "Similar to doing a provision, you need to specify a new DC when
you
>> run the restore command. This new DC must not have existed previously 
>> in the Samba network". Is there a way to restore a backup into a 
>> server without having to rename it?
>>
>> Thanks in advance!
>> Best regards,
>> David Wells.
>
> Sorry to be a bit late in replying, but I cannot recommend doing this. 
> If you have running DC's, then just join a new DC. If you require 
> backups, you should backup the domain with samba-tool and then use 
> that backup if you get a catastrophic failure. AD is constantly 
> changing and if you use a snapshot, you can re-introduce incorrect 
> changes back into AD, because the 'cloned' DC will replicate to all
> other DC's.
>
> Rowland
>
>
Rowland, thanks for your reply.

I understand this is not recommended for a production network. What I 
need is a test environment, totally isolated test environment, to test a 
new ad integrated dovecot+postfix setup which will then be put in place 
(aka copy the resulting configuration files) in the production network. 
I could also clone the vm but I would love to be able test with an 
updated samba.

Thanks again!
Best regards,
David Wells.