Restoration of empty attributes to AD (831792)

CAUSE

When you back up the Active Directory, only attributes that are set are backed up. When you restore the data, you replace the local Active Directory by the objects that are in the backup. Then, the authoritative restore increases the version number of each attributes, so they are higher than on the other DCs. During next replication, restored attributes will overwrite those on the other domain controllers.

The attributes that were not set at the time of the backup are left empty by authoritative restores. As empty attributes don't have metadata (USN, version numbers, etc.), their version will then not be increased. Thus, when replication occurs, they will be set to the value replicated from the replication partner.

Also, if you create new objects in your Active Directory and then restore a backup done before they were added, they will be recreated locally after the next replication occurs. No deletion order is generated by authroritative restores.