Restore Options and Behavior in Active Directory

Restoring Group Policy Objects

Procedure

Group Policy Objects (GPOs) can be restored from their location in Active Directory. Follow these steps to locate and restore a GPO:

1. From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Protect > Active Directory.

   The Overview page appears.

2. Go to the Apps tab.

   The list of Active Directory servers appears.

3. Click the Active Directory server for which you want to restore Group Policy Objects.

   The active directory server Overview page appears.

4. In the upper-right area of the page, click Restore gpo.

   The list of Group Policy Objects appears.

5. Select the Group Policy Objects to restore, and then click Restore.

   The Restore options dialog box appears.

6. Select one of the following options which determine how links associated with the GPO are restored:

   • Revert all links to their original state in the backup

     This option will restore all links the GPO has to containers (for example domains, OUs) to the state those links were captured at in the selected backup. Note: if additional links were created from the GPO after the backup was created, those links will be deleted from Active Directory.

   • Restore links from backup and merge with existing links

     This option will restore all links the GPO has from the backup. If additional links were created from the GPO after the backup was created, those links will remain untouched in Active Directory.

   • Do not restore any links from backup

     Choose this option if you would prefer not to restore any GPO links.

7. To use the advanced restore options and restore only specific attributes, move the Restore only specific attributes toggle key to the right.

8. Enter the name of the attribute to restore, and then click Add.

9. Click Submit.

Restoring Object Relationships

When restoring an object that owns relationships such as a group (which owns group memberships), any existing relationships will be overwritten with the relationships from the selected backup.

For example, select an Active Directory group to restore from backup.

• During backup, the group members were Sally, Michael, and Phil.

• Currently, in Active Directory, the same group has Sally, Phil, Steve, and Cindy as the members.

• After restoring the group from backup, the members will be Sally, Michael, and Phil. Steve and Cindy will be removed as they were not members when the backup was created.