If you recall, awhile ago I started writing about how I lost everything when my one home server crashed.
Now with AD actually working, but WMI toast (although I didn't know it at the time) I was able to advance my clock back to current time... User passwords and computer account passwords were out of date, so had to disjoin and rejoin PC's to the domain... reset passwords...
Now, I have AD up, sorta. My first priority at that point was to get AD replicated to another machine. Fired up virtual server on my workstation and installed Server 2003... joined to domain and DC promo'd it... Looked good, but sysvol was empty... crap. Check back... FRS on the old box wouldn't actually let the DC's replicate with each other...
Manually copied the sysvol around and some other funness that you don't want to ever do again...
While this was going on, convinced the other half that it was time for a new server.... this time around I went with 4 drives in a raid1 and that ran them in 2008 hyperv...
When the new box came in, built up a new 2008 DC and was able to get it to replicate with the temp DC on my workstation... Couldn't get it to replicate with the old PC...
Next up, exchange... Bring up a new 2008 server to run exchange 2007... get that all setup, and then comes the fun of trying to forklift the DB across... get some weird errors, and actually go back to the 2003 box... Start killing off some services and work on getting the information store to mount... kill off wmi and find things work a lot better... i can actually start/stop services... and am able to convince exchange 2003 to mount my database... Quick transfer later and email is moved....
Now, I need to deal with sharepoint (this site) and my file serving.... so bring up another 2008 server... transfer the files, re-install sharepoint and sql, and create a new farm db... now to attach my SQL databases...
Nope, no joy... sql databases are foo bared... logs are corrupt and the datafiles are corrupt... neither sql will mount it...
Create a new db with the same names/files as the old one's... and stop sql.... replace the databases over the old one's and restart sql... now SQL knows about the DB's... and its just a matter of fixing the DB's, which I'm not getting anywhere. Eventually give up, and actually truncate the transaction logs and repair the corruptions... through a script i found on the web, will post a link when I find it...
Add the site back into sharepoint... and wow, there's my site back.....
next up, to make sure not left with one DC... I bring up a new vm on the server and set it up for be DC... make sure replication is going between 3 of the 4 DC's.... then dcpromo out the temp one on my machine, and then the old server...