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How do you create a back up DNS? I have several back up
W2k servers, but they all obtain DNS from Primary Domain
Controller. If PDC which acts as Primary DNS goes down,
there must be a way to use back up DNS server as a back
up. Thank you.
There is no PDC in Win2k only DCs there is a PDC emulator but all DCs in a
Win2k domain have a writable database.
If all your Win2k servers are DCs all can act as SOA for the AD zones. If
you lose one DC you will not notice much difference, if you lose an
operations master transfer its role to another DC.
If they have secondary zones it is just a simple matter of changing them to
primary zones before the secondary zone expires. A standard primary zone you
should set the "expires after" to at least 7 days (my opinion) This would
give you a week to change the secondary to a primary before you lose the
zone, then when you get another DNS up bring it up as a secondary.
DNS makes its own backups this way so unless you lose all DNS servers at the
same time you're covered. Look at it this way, a backup is only as good as
the last time it was backed up and secondary DNS servers are backups.
