Lesson 1

Implementing Disaster Protection on Windows Server 2022

Disaster protection involves the efforts by support professionals to prevent computer disasters and to minimize the amount of time a computer is non-functional in the event of a system failure. A computer disaster is any event that renders a computer unable to start or that creates an imminent risk of data loss. The causes of computer disasters range from isolated hardware failures to a complete system loss, such as in the case of fire.
At the end of this module, you will be able to:

Define the basic types of disaster protection
Implement fault-tolerant volumes
Recover failed mirror volumes of varied status
Recover failed RAID-5 volumes of varied status
Define advanced startup options
Define Recovery Console commands

Windows Server 2022 Features designed to help an Administrator recover from Computer Disasters

Windows Server Backup

Scheduled and Manual Backups: Automate regular backups or perform on-demand backups to local drives, network shares, or remote shared folders.
Bare-Metal Recovery: Restores the operating system, system state, and critical data to recover a server from catastrophic failure.
Recovery Wizard: Simplifies restoration of files, folders, or system state, allowing recovery to original or alternate locations.

Storage Replica

Synchronous Replication: Ensures zero data loss by mirroring data in real-time within low-latency environments, ideal for high-resiliency scenarios.
Asynchronous Replication: Suitable for geographically separated sites, allowing some potential data loss but faster replication over longer distances.
Test Failover: Allows testing of failover processes by mounting destination storage volumes to validate replication without disrupting production.
Availability: Included in both Standard and Datacenter editions, with Standard edition limited to one volume per server, one partnership, and 2TB volumes.

Hyper-V Replica

VM-Level Replication: Creates and maintains replicas of selected VMs, capturing changes periodically and applying them to the replica.
Primary and Extended Replicas: Supports one primary replica target and one extended replica target for additional redundancy.
Manual Failover: Prevents false failovers in high-latency networks, allowing administrators to initiate failover when needed.

Azure Backup Integration

Recovery Vaults and Backup Policies: Configure backups to Azure for secure offsite storage, with policies for scheduling and retention.
Backup and Restore: Supports backup and restoration of on-premises workloads, Azure VMs, and Windows IaaS VMs.
Scalability: Leverages Azure’s cloud infrastructure for large-scale backup storage and recovery.

Azure Site Recovery (ASR)

Replication Management: Supports replication of VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs, and physical servers to Azure or a secondary site.
Automated Failover: Automates failover processes for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and other workloads, reducing recovery time.
Customizable Recovery Plans: Allows grouping of VMs for sequential recovery, ensuring critical components are restored in the correct order.

Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC)

Geographically Dispersed Clusters: Supports stretched clusters across different locations for disaster recovery, often combined with Storage Replica or SAN replication.
Cluster Sets: Groups multiple failover clusters into a single logical entity, enabling hyperscale and VM live migration between clusters.
Cross-Domain Migration: Simplifies moving clusters to a new domain using PowerShell cmdlets, supporting disaster recovery scenarios.

BitLocker Drive Encryption

Data Protection: Ensures sensitive data remains secure if physical drives are compromised during a disaster.
Integration with TPM: Uses Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 for secure cryptographic operations.

Data Deduplication

Storage Optimization: Decreases storage costs and accelerates backup and recovery times.
Integration with Backup Solutions: Enhances efficiency of Windows Server Backup and Azure Backup.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Disaster Recovery

Geo-Redundancy: Leverages multiple Azure data centers to maintain RDS access if one data center fails.
Failover with Azure Site Recovery: Automates failover of RDS component VMs to a secondary site or Azure.

Implementing disaster protection using Windows Deployment Services (WDS) on Windows Server 2022 involves a strategy to ensure that your deployment infrastructure can recover quickly in case of server failure, data loss, or corruption. WDS itself doesn’t offer built-in high availability, but you can build a resilient deployment system by following best practices in backup, replication, and automation.

Backup WDS Configuration and Image Store
- Backup the WDS RemoteInstall folder
  - Default path: C:\RemoteInstall
  - Contains:
    - Boot images
    - Install images
    - PXE configuration
```
robocopy C:\RemoteInstall D:\WDSBackup /MIR
```
- Backup WDS Configuration Settings from Registry
  - Export this registry key:
```
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer
```
```
reg export HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WDSServer D:\WDSBackup\WDS-Config.reg
```
- Backup WDS server role settings
  - Optionally, use Windows Server Backup to back up:
    - System State
    - WDS Role data
    - RemoteInstall folder

Document and Export Boot/Install Image Metadata

Use PowerShell to list and export information about boot/install images:

Get-WdsBootImage | Export-Csv D:\WDSBackup\BootImages.csv
Get-WdsInstallImage | Export-Csv D:\WDSBackup\InstallImages.csv

Enable Redundancy (Optional High Availability)
- Set up a secondary WDS server with synchronized images and configuration.
- Use DFS Replication to keep the RemoteInstall folders in sync.
- Use DHCP failover and configure PXE settings on both servers.
- Optionally, place WDS behind a load balancer.
Snapshot and Backup DHCP and AD DS Integration
- Backup DHCP scopes (if integrated with PXE/WDS):
```
netsh dhcp server export C:\Backup\dhcpconfig.dat all
```
- Ensure Active Directory is backed up if you’re using prestaged devices or Group Policy-based deployment rules.
Automate Recovery Steps
- Create a PowerShell script or documentation to:
  - Reinstall WDS role
  - Re-import images and settings
  - Reconfigure PXE settings
  - Restore the RemoteInstall folder
Test Disaster Recovery Regularly
- Simulate a restore on a test server:
  - Restore the RemoteInstall folder
  - Reapply registry/configuration
  - Test PXE boot with a dummy client
- Verify:
  - Images are accessible
  - PXE boot works
  - Deployment completes successfully
Monitor Logs and Events
- Monitor:
  - Event Viewer → Applications and Services Logs → Windows Deployment Services
  - WDSUTIL /Get-All for diagnostics

✅ Bonus: Tools to Enhance Protection

Tool/Technique	Purpose
Windows Server Backup	Full WDS and system state backup
DFS-R	Folder replication between servers
RoboCopy	Lightweight file replication
Task Scheduler	Automate regular WDS backups
PowerShell scripts	Restore/redeploy WDS automatically