If you are all set to back up your Active Directory (AD) data, you can head over to the Druva Cloud Platform Console and configure a backup.
There are two key components to Active Directory backup.
Part 1: Download and Install the Active Directory agent and register Active Directory Domain
Log in to the Management Console.
On the Cloud Platform dashboard, navigate to the Global Navigation icon and click Microsoft Active Directory.
If you are navigating to the Active Directory screen for the first time, you see this message: <Start your journey> screen
Contact support to enable support for Active Directory in your account. When Druva Support enables it for you, you can see this screen:
If Cloud Key Management is not enabled, Druva asks you to enable it.
For more information, see Configure Cloud Key Management (KMS) for Microsoft Active Directory
📝Note: You can skip enabling Cloud Key Management at this point. But scheduled backups will not start until you enable it. Druva recommends that you enable it here itself to ensure your backup jobs run without any issues.
On the Get Started with Microsoft Active Directory protection page, click Register Domain. It takes you to the Register Domain page where you Download, Install, and activate Active Directory agent to register AD Domain for backup.
When your AD Domain is registered with Druva, close the pop-up. Navigate to the Druva Cloud Platform console > Microsoft Active Directory > Forests page to view the registered domains.
If you have come this far, then you have successfully completed part 1. You can now configure backup settings for your registered AD Domain. Druva will back up your data based on your configuration.
Part 2: Configure the backup
On the Discovered Forests screen, click Configure Now.
On the dialog that appears, specify:
Domains for backup: Name of the registered AD Domain that you want to configure for backup.
Backup Configuration section
Storage Region: Where Druva stores snapshots of your data. Currently, you can select any inSync Cloud storage region that is configured for you except GovCloud regions for Active Directory backups.
❗️Important: You cannot change this region after the first backup. You can only choose from the options that are available to you. If only one region is configured for your account, then it is selected for you at this step and you cannot change it. If you want to choose another region to store your snapshots, contact support to get another storage region configured for you.
Granular Object -Level Backup section
Backup Frequency: How often you want Druva to back up your data. You can choose: Daily or Weekly.
Start At: At what time you want Druva to backup your data.
Backup Window: The backup window sets a strict time limit (in hours) for the scheduled Granular object backup to complete. If the backup job exceeds this time, it fails. The backup succeeds only if it finishes within the specified window. By default it is 7 hours. For example, a 1-hour backup window will result in the job failing if the backup takes longer than 1 hour. Conversely, a backup job will succeed if it completes within the defined window, such as a 7-hour backup completing in 6 hours and 59 minutes.
Retain all backups for: Right now, Druva stores all the snapshots forever.
System State Backup section
Backup Frequency: How often you want Druva to back up your system state data. For System State, backups are performed daily.
Start At: At what time you want Druva to backup your data.
Backup Window: The backup window sets a strict time limit (in hours) for the scheduled backup to complete. If the backup job exceeds this time, it fails. The backup succeeds only if it finishes within the specified window. By default it is 7 hours. For example, a 1-hour backup window will result in the job failing if the backup takes longer than 1 hour. Conversely, a backup job will succeed if it completes within the defined window, such as a 7-hour backup completing in 6 hours and 59 minutes.
Retain all backups for: Right now, Druva stores all the snapshots for 90 days.
Review all your settings and click Save.
You have successfully configured backup for your AD Domain at this step. Druva runs the backup based on the settings and creates a snapshot of your Microsoft Active Directory data.
💡Tip: For Granular object backups, the first backup is a full backup, and subsequent backups are incremental. In contrast, every System State backup is a full backup.
Run a backup manually
If you could install the agent, register the AD Domain, and configure a backup, you can see that the Microsoft Active Directory All Domains > Configured Domains tab screen changes and displays list and details of all AD Domains configured for backups.
You can find more information about this page on its dedicated documentation article, but this is also the place that provides the Backup Now button. Use the Backup Now button if you want to run a backup yourself and don’t want to wait for Druva to run a scheduled backup.
When you run a backup manually (or when Druva runs a scheduled backup), Druva creates a backup job. You can go to the jobs page to see more details on it.
To learn more about the data that Druva can protect, see Active Directory data that Druva protects.