2

I want to export and migrate a Certificate Authority CA role from a Windows 2003 machine to a new copy of Windows 2008 R2 virtual machine. I was told that I cannot have 2 CA roles on the same network at the same time. Therefore, I must first export the certificates on the older machine, delete the CA role, then add the CA role on the new machine and import the certificates into it. As a safety precaution, I am tasked to find a backup solution in case this does not work and I need to revert back to the old Windows 2003 CA.

My question is: What is the best software for doing this type of backup? I am currently trying out Symantec Backup Exec 2012. Which I hope will allow me to create a backup prior to removing CA role on Windows 2003. If this CA migration fails, the backup will allow me to revert the old machine to a time before I removed its CA role.

MadHatter
  • 78,442
  • 20
  • 178
  • 229
Dina
  • 189
  • 1
  • 9

1 Answers1

2

Microsoft has specific documentation detailing the migration of the certification authority (CA). That documentation describes backup and restore of the CA database and that's the documentation that I'd consider to be the most reliable. Since some of the details of the CA are stored in Active Directory I'd be really dubious of just restoring the machine from backup in the event of a roll back.

Evan Anderson
  • 141,071
  • 19
  • 191
  • 328