Netwrix Active Directory Object Restore Wizard

SC Magazine Review, 2012: Netwrix Change Reporter named excellent at doing what it is intended to do.

Restoring deleted objects, incorrect modifications, unauthorized changes to group memberships, and other information in Active Directory can be a difficult and error-prone task — sometimes it is impossible. Should somebody accidentally drop a user or an entire OU, you've got a lot of work to do on your weekend or Friday night. You will, of course, have to learn the AD architecture, including object types, tombstone, and attributes to restore Active Directory objects, and you still may not obtain 100% recovery of certain attributes (e.g., group membership, home directory, enabled/disabled status). Native and third-party Active Directory backup and recovery tools in most cases require non-authoritative restore and DC downtime, and they don´t always have object-level restore capabilities (download Summary: Limitations of Native Tools to learn more).

Netwrix AD Object Restore Wizard allows you to quickly restore deleted and modified objects in Windows 2003 or 2008 Active Directory without rebooting a domain controller. This Active Directory recovery tool goes beyond the standard tombstone capabilities in Active Directory and stores more information than what is normally preserved in the AD tombstone. Therefore, it´s much more reliable than other tools based on standard Microsoft Tombstone Reanimation interfaces. Moreover, no Active Directory backup and restore tool relying only on the tombstone will be able to revert modified and incorrectly added objects.

Netwrix Auditing Platform Architecture

This tool is a part of the AD Change Reporter, so you will have a convenient change management solution for free, and you won't have to do manual tracking of unauthorized changes or perform routine manual Active Directory recovery. You just receive a daily report of all changes and launch the wizard if recovery is required. Summary reports show what objects and attributes have been changed, deleted, or added in Active Directory to ease recovery tasks and to help you perform object- or even attribute-level recoveries.