Get last Active Directory Backup date

Hello,

Backing up your Active Directory is an essential step you need to perform on a regular basis, this will ensure that you can restore individual object, or previous state of individual objects.You can use a variety of tools to backup your Active Directory, the important detail is to use a supported one. I demonstrated how to do so with the free one included in the box with Windows Server since a few years (Windows Server Backup).

Get last Active Directory Backup date – Different methods

Event :

Each time you backup your Active Directory with a supported tool, you have an event generated in the “Directory Service” journal :

Backup Event

Note : You can search for multiple occurrences of this event to check if it’s happened on a regular basis.

RepAdmin.exe

You can use the good old tool called RepAdmin.exe :

repadmin /showbackup

Get last Active Directory Backup date – RepAdmin

Note : If you look at the “Ver” column, you can see how many times the naming context has been backed up.

dSASignature :

The dSASignature attribute on the each Naming Context can also tell you the last backup date. Indeed, this attribute is modified each time a backup occur, so, you can check the metadata of this attribute to see the last backup date :

Get last Active Directory Backup date – dSASignature

Note : If you look at the “Version” member, you can see how many time the naming context has been backed up.

Get last Active Directory Backup date – Monitor

Whatever method you choose, you really need to monitor those dates to ensure that your Active Directory is backed up. The Recycle-Bin introduced in Windows Server 2008 r2 can help you restore a deleted object, but it can’t do anything against corrupted attributes, that’s why a combination of those can be interesting and powerful. Again, the belt and suspenders is a good practice.