NetWrix Active Directory Object Restore Wizard is a super simple tool that can save the day. The tool creates Active Directory snapshots, and allows you to restore deleted and modified objects easily. Imagine that you accidently deleted the wrong user container. You only wanted to delete your test accounts, but now all the users in your Active Directory are gone. You can either look for a new job, or just restore them with the AD Object Restore Wizard.
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You probably know that Active Directory restores from backups is quite complicated. Check out this Technet article if you haven't dealt with this topic yet. If you ever have to restore Active Directory and you don't know exactly what you have to do, you will run into serious trouble. AD Object Restore Wizard can help you in cases where objects have been accidently deleted, or when you want to revert the changes you just made. It is certainly not a replacement for backups, though.
The AD Object Restore Wizard comes with the free tool Active Directory Change Reporter, which I reviewed last year. I think at that time, the AD Object Restore Wizard wasn't available. NetWrix deliverers these tools together because they both rely on snapshots.
Active Directory snapshots are created once per day by default. You can change this setting in the Windows Task Scheduler. After installing the tools, you will find a task which creates the snapshots for both tools. To try the AD Object Restore Wizard, you can run this task manually (right click) and then make some changes to Active Directory.
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In the first step, you have to choose the rollback point (snapshot). The AD Object Restore Wizard will then analyze changes between the selected rollback point and your current Active Directory state. In my test environment, this was only a matter of seconds; I suppose it will take a little longer with a bigger Active Directory database. Next, the wizard will allow you to choose which Active Directory objects should be restored. You can restore a complete container with all its objects with just mouse click.
