Certification Authority BackupTo recover a certification authority (CA), you should have a complete backup of the entire server made with the native ntbackup program. The complete backup should include system state data. (Note that the IIS metabase backup is required to restore the CA, and the system state data backup will back this up.) In addition to this backup, consider separate backups ofCertificate databaseCA keysIIS metabaseIIS web content pages If this data is available, you may be able to recover certificate services more quickly. For example, if the IIS server is intact, you might be able to remove and reinstall certificate services using the existing CA keys and then restore the certificate database. You also might be able to do so if a standby server is ready to be put into place but requires the database and/or keys in order to replace the original server.The CA console can be used to back up the private key and certificate as well as the certificate database. The IIS console can be used to back up the metabase. Backup should be used to back up the web content pages. Alternatively, IIS could be reinstalled and the certutil.exe -vroot command used to reconfigure IIS to support CA web pages.To back up the database and CA keys, follow these steps:
The certutil.exe command can also be used to back up the database: In this command, cacomputername is the name of the computer on which the CA is installed, and caname is the name of the CA itself. A password can be used to protect the backup. For complete syntax, see the CA help file.When restoring the CA, do not delete the database logs if they are present. During the restore process, the logs will be replayed, and the certificate database can be brought up to date. (Database logs are, by default, stored at <%systemroot%>\system32\certlog.)To restore database or keys using the CA console, follow these steps: |