Primary DNS Fails Shortly when Secondary is down

[philip.schmitz]

We have 2 DNS servers a primary and a secondary running standalone on
windows 2000 server. There is no Active Directory Involved. We are
simply using these to provide zone records for domains for websites and
email. A few days ago our secondary DNS server was taken offline.
While the secondary isi running there are no problems. However, as
soon as the secondary if offline, randomly once or twice a day for
about 5 - 15 minutes, DNS requests do not resolve for many users. I
thought that the reason for haveing a primary and a secondary was in
part so that if one was down, DNS would still function properly?

Both servers are set up with the following settings:

forwarders: unchecked
disable recursion: unchecked
BIND secondaries: checked
Fail on load if bad zone data: unchecked
Enable Round robin: checked
Enable netmask orderng: checked
Secure cache against polution: Checked
Name checking: Multibyte(UFT8)
Load zone data on startup from: active directory and registry
Enable automatic scavenging of stale records: unchecked

Hour insight help is much appreciated!!!

Thanks!

 

[Kurt]

The first question is around the "for many users" part of your post. Do
those users list both DNS servers? Also, what have you done to diagnose?
What happens when you perform an nslookup from a non-resolving client? Does
the on-line DNS server reply? Does any DNS server reply? Can you ping the
DNS server? Are you sure you've got your primary and secondaries straight? A
secondary is short-lived. After a few failed zone transfers, the secondary
will expire. You can configure it to a longer expiration time. If the
primary is on-line, all computers can reach it, and it is configured as a
resolver - it should work.

...kurt