Quest Object Restore for Active Directory

Systems such as Exchange Server are closely entwined with Windows Active Directory, so customers can experience problems even if the mail server itself is still functioning correctly.

If your local system admin accidentally deletes their GPO, for example, the details of the users and mailboxes will be deleted.

Fortunately, the information isn’t actually erased. Deleted items in Windows Server Active Directory are what is called Tombstoned – essentially put into cold storage for a limited time, and available for recovery. You can get them back using command-line Windows Server Tombstone Reanimation tools, but if you want a nice friendly drag and drop interface where you can see what you’re retrieving and where it’s going to be placed, Quest Software has a free graphical utility called Object Restore for Active Directory. This lets you recover deleted objects in a Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 environment without rebooting your Domain Controller. The utility lets you view Tombstoned objects in Active Directory and reanimate the deleted users or mailboxes, dropping them back into Active Directory. If you’re recovering mailboxes, you’ll still need to reconnect them to the appropriate user accounts. If you’re using Exchange Server, it has wizards to guide you through the process and it should be relatively pain free.

Restoring a tombstoned object in Quest Object Restore.