Domain Controller recovery: the plan to test before an emergency

A Domain Controller recovery plan should answer practical questions before an outage: which backups are usable, who can authorize recovery, where are the required credentials, and how will services be validated afterward? Document the forest and domain design, FSMO-role holders, backup locations, recovery contacts, DNS dependencies, and any applications that rely on directory services. Protect emergency accounts separately from daily administration and test access without depending on the systems they are intended to recover. Test restoration in an isolated environment. Validate the directory, SYSVOL, DNS, replication, authentication, and critical application sign-in paths. Capture each decision in the runbook. A plan that has only been read is a document; a plan that has been rehearsed is a recovery capability.