# Runbooks for Active Directory forest recovery

A runbook is a framework for planning, executing, and tracking the series of steps for forest recovery in a specific order.

Recovering an Active Directory forest involves much more than simply restoring copies of the AD database from backup. Forest recovery is a complicated process that involves many pre- and post-recovery configuration steps that modify attributes on the domain controllers and in Active Directory and that do not involve restoring data. Because of Active Directory’s multi-master replication model, to ensure there is no corruption in the recovered AD environment, these important configuration steps must be completed during and after the restore of each domain controller.

You can create multiple runbooks for different recovery scenarios, or to manage recovery plans for different forests or environments.

## Types of runbook steps

Each runbook includes the following types of steps:

- Recovery tasks, such as restoring a domain controller from backup

- Pre- and post-configuration steps, which are executed before and after recovery tasks

- Manual steps, which are pauses in the runbook for you to validate recovered data and to complete other tasks that are required for restoring business continuity

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