U-Move for Active Directory Domain Controllers

U-Move is the all-in-one AD software utility that lets you recover, move, clone, or migrate the Microsoft® Active Directory® database on your domain controller (DC) for backup, disaster recovery, cloud migration, testing, or upgrade. It gives you more ways to back up and recover AD than any other utility.

• Back up and restore Active Directory quickly and easily.
• Schedule fast daily or weekly automatic backups of Active Directory.
• Clone Active Directory to another computer or VM for disaster recovery, cloud migration, or offline testing.
• Upgrade Active Directory to a replacement domain controller that is running a newer version of Windows Server (swing migration) on a different computer or VM.

U-Move Features

U-Move can do all of the following:

• Make perfect snapshots of Active Directory.
• Rescue Active Directory from a non-bootable domain controller for disaster recovery.
• Schedule daily or weekly backups of AD that are quick and compact.
• Restore AD without reloading the entire System State.
• Clone Active Directory to a VM in your test lab.
• Migrate your domain controller to a new replacement DC and advise you each step of the way.

U-Move 2 is an upgrade from UMove version 1. Learn about the new features in U-Move Version 2.

A True Recovery Utility

U-Move is a true recovery utility. It can rescue AD from any source or backup, even from a dead computer.

U-Move should not be confused with more expensive “undo” utilities that create a parallel SQL database to track and roll back changes to individual AD objects. U-Move simply clones the entire AD database by taking a perfect snapshot. It copies only the files used by AD, keeping the size small, creating a single .BKF file for easy recovery on another computer.

Make Reliable Backups

U-Move can make reliable automatic daily backups of Active Directory. The backup includes all information required to restore AD. The backup includes important extra information outside the System State that is essential to move AD to a different computer. Only U-Move is designed to move all of AD to any replacement computer regardless of its hardware or VM configuration.

Clone AD for Testing

Microsoft recommends that you validate the compatibility of all security-related configuration changes in a test forest before you introduce them in a production environment. U-Move allows you to clone AD so that you can test your changes to Active Directory. You can copy a snapshot of AD to an isolated virtual machine (VM) or to an offline computer.

Swing Migration Made Simple

Migrating Active Directory to a new computer can be a complicated task. U-Move will guide you through a simple step-by-step procedure to replace the old domain controller (DC) with a new domain controller, all while checking your actions each step of the way.

U-Move will carefully guide you through the entire upgrade process. It will perform hundreds of tests to look for many common (and some not-so-common) errors. U-Move will offer to do the most difficult steps automatically for you: moving the FSMO roles and moving DNS. Or you can do it all yourself and have U-Move check your work.

Quick and Easy Migration

U-Move makes what is usually a very complicated task easy and straightforward. And with perfect backup snapshots and offline cloning for testing, it gives you the safest and most reliable way to upgrade your DC.