Preferred VS. Alternate

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Guest

Ok, I need a little assistance documenting the proper case. First, I am
dealing with Windows 2000 domain with Windows 2000 clients. I have a
question about the setup of DNS. First, let's say that I have 2 domains. I
have my domain in which I am only running DNS on one server, the DC. I have
configured DHCP to give out IP addresses and I am only using the Preferred
DNS entry. There is no alternate DNS address listed. Now I introduce the
second domain. First, I am not creating a secondary zone of any type in this
domain. For all purposes I do not have rights to this domain but it might be
used for DNS resolution. The solution I am using is to use DNS Forwarders to
do any type of resolution. I would not want to put the second domain's DNS
server address as an alternate. I would need to find documentation as to why
this is a bad idea when the alternate DNS Server does not have any domain
information for the primary domain.

So I have this question. Is there documentation anywhere that states the
purpose of the Preferred and Alternate DNS entry? It was my impression that
these entries only point to DNS servers within their own domain or for DNS
servers that have a secondary zone configured for them.

The other question is would I want to look into adding secondary zone on the
other domain? Would I need to configure a trust? This could be problematic.
And at the same time are there problems with forwarding?

Any help would be appreciated.
 
In
Donald Palmer said:
Ok, I need a little assistance documenting the proper case. First, I
am dealing with Windows 2000 domain with Windows 2000 clients. I
have a question about the setup of DNS. First, let's say that I have
2 domains. I have my domain in which I am only running DNS on one
server, the DC. I have configured DHCP to give out IP addresses and
I am only using the Preferred DNS entry. There is no alternate DNS
address listed. Now I introduce the second domain. First, I am not
creating a secondary zone of any type in this domain. For all
purposes I do not have rights to this domain but it might be used for
DNS resolution. The solution I am using is to use DNS Forwarders to
do any type of resolution. I would not want to put the second
domain's DNS server address as an alternate. I would need to find
documentation as to why this is a bad idea when the alternate DNS
Server does not have any domain information for the primary domain.

So I have this question. Is there documentation anywhere that states
the purpose of the Preferred and Alternate DNS entry? It was my
impression that these entries only point to DNS servers within their
own domain or for DNS servers that have a secondary zone configured
for them.

The other question is would I want to look into adding secondary zone
on the other domain? Would I need to configure a trust? This could
be problematic. And at the same time are there problems with
forwarding?

Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Multiple DNS entries is not for toggling back and forth if one doesn't have
the answer. It is purely for fault tolerance. All DNS entries specified MUST
have the same zone data available for resolution in any AD infrastructure.

The first entry is parsed, if it times out, it tries a couple more times, if
nothing, then it removes it from the 'eligible resolvers list' and goes to
the next entry, never going back to thefirst unless you: 1)restart the
machine, 2)restart the DNS client side service, 3)make a reg entry to reset
the list after each resolution request.

Querying DNS Servers - how the resolver service works:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prjj_ipa_bsmz.asp

SP4 Changes DNS Name Resolution (works for XP too):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;198550

DNS Client Side Resolver:
http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS2000/en/server/help/sag_DNS_ovr_ClientFeatures.htm

286834 - The DNS Client Service Does Not Revert to Using the First Server in
the List [explained in the DNS white papers]:
(This also has the reg entry to force it to reset the list)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;286834

All in all, just use your internal servers. If you have another zone you
want to resolve to on another server, create a secondary zone on your own of
it if you can. If not, just forward to it provided the administrator didn't
disable recursion on it. Windows 2003 has a feature called conditional
forwarding where you can forward specific namespaces to a specific DNS.

--
Regards,
Ace

Please direct all replies ONLY to the Microsoft public newsgroups
so all can benefit.

This posting is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties or guarantees
and confers no rights.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2003 & 2000, MCSA 2003 & 2000, MCSE+I, MCT, MVP
Microsoft Windows MVP - Windows Server - Directory Services

Paramount: What's up with taking Enterprise off the air??
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