Virtualization should be a very mature skill for years. Today I tried one thing and got a successful result, hope it’s also helpful for you.
Environment introduction as below:
(1) production AD domain controller ran on VLAN 1
(2) a clone VM which made by 3 months ago ran on VLAN 50
(3) using WSB, backup production AD DC’s C Drive on local D drive.
so, is it possible to copy production’s backup material to vlan 50 DC to sync domain information between each other?
the answer is yes!! of course.
below is what i was doing today.
(1) NAS sync the backup folder from production DC.
(2) VLAN 50 which be cloned DC got the backup from NAS.
(3) in VLAN 50 DC, ran a command as below:
wbadmin restore catalog, for detailed, you could review it at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/wbadmin-restore-catalog
(4) above will let your system think it’s backup by itself.
(5) and then restart vlan 50 dc to be under Directory Services Restore Mode.
(6) after it’s rebooted, execute the command as below
weadmin get versions
to find out if it’s the newest backup just done by production DC.
(7) and then execute the restore command as below
wbadmin start systemstaterecovery -version:<VersionIdentifier>
version identifier, please refer to the get version result as step 6.
(8) and then you will sync two DCs’s data completely.
enjoy it.