DNS Best practices: Where to piont secondary DC's?

  • Thread starter Thread starter KW
  • Start date Start date
K

KW

I have three domain controllers in my environment and I want to ensure they
are configured for best practices. Here is a high level layout of my
scenerio:

2000 ADS, single forest, no child domains. All DC's have DNS installed.

DC01.mydomain.com
Pri DNS = DC01
Sec DNS = nothing

DC02.mydomain.com
Pri DNS = DC02
Sec DNS = DC01

DC03.mydomain.com
Pri DNS = DC03
Sec DNS = DC01

I assumed that all DC's were supposed to point to themselves for DNS until I
read an MS article ID 275278. This expresses a few concerns about DNS
servers islanding themselves if pointed to themselves. I am thinking about
configuring DC02 and DC03 to point to DC01 and set their alternates to be
DC03 and DC02. My only hesitation was at the bottom of the article it says
it applies to Windows 2000 SP1 and SP2.

Obviously more complex domains require more complex configurations, but I
want to ensure this is still best practice in its simplest form.

Thanks for reading
Kevin
 
Ya, I've found that they should all point to another as their preferred and
to themselves as the alternate. Most of the time it works fine either way,
but there are circumstances where something that requires DNS resolution
runs before the local DNS service has started up. It can lead to long
startups, or scripts that can't be located, etc.

....kurt
 
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