Where in AD is DNS kept?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve Gould
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Steve Gould

I have two DC's with Win 2K and AD. Both run DNS, one as standard primary
and one as secondary. I converted the first to AD Integrated and let it run
for a few days to make sure there were no problems. Next I tried to convert
the secondary to AD integrated. It failed saying the zone didn't exist in
AD. When I reset the DNS service on the first DC the zones disappeared. It
looks like the zones never wrote to AD after all. I was able to recover the
zone files from backup and reset DNS to primary/secondary. I'm not sure what
is wrong because there are no error messages.

I tried the process with a new test zone and it worked like a charm. Doth
DC's were able to use it and restarting the DNS service didn't blow the zone
away as it did before. I tried again to convert my actual zones from Primary
to AD just on one server and this time the message said the zone already
existed in AD. I chose to overwrite the current zone in AD. When it was done
I restarted DNS ALL my zones disappeared even though I only converted one
zone.

Suggestions?

Where in AD are the zone data stored? Can I use ADSIedit to get to it? I
can't find it. I want to go in and blow away all references to the DNS zones
in AD so I can try from scratch.
 
If it the DNS zone is ADI, it is party of your AD database.

What you have to do is, convert the Primary Zone to ADI and delete the
Seconday Zone from the second DC. After the next AD replication, you will
see the ADI DNS zone on your second DC. Because DNS zone transfer is also
part of AD replication!
 
Now that makes a little sense. I can understand the need to delete the
secondary zone and let it set itself up on the secondary DNS server. The
original problem still exists in that if I convert the zone it disappears as
soon as the service is restarted. I'll hunt for it again in AD.

Steve
 
Found it in ADSI. It all looks valid. Now I need to figure out why I can't
add those zones and why they won't stay when I restart DNS.

Steve
 
No luck. I deleted all zones on the secondary DNS server, set the properties
to load from AD, stopped the DNS service, restarted the Net Logon service
and then started DNS. No zones.

Thanks for all your help Santhosh. I am leaving for the day so will try
again tomorrow.

Steve
 
Steve Gould said:
I have two DC's with Win 2K and AD. Both run DNS, one as standard primary
and one as secondary. I converted the first to AD Integrated and let it run
for a few days to make sure there were no problems. Next I tried to convert
the secondary to AD integrated. It failed saying the zone didn't exist in
AD. When I reset the DNS service on the first DC the zones disappeared. It
looks like the zones never wrote to AD after all. I was able to recover the
zone files from backup and reset DNS to primary/secondary. I'm not sure what
is wrong because there are no error messages.

I tried the process with a new test zone and it worked like a charm. Doth
DC's were able to use it and restarting the DNS service didn't blow the zone
away as it did before. I tried again to convert my actual zones from Primary
to AD just on one server and this time the message said the zone already
existed in AD. I chose to overwrite the current zone in AD. When it was done
I restarted DNS ALL my zones disappeared even though I only converted one
zone.

Suggestions?

Where in AD are the zone data stored? Can I use ADSIedit to get to it? I
can't find it. I want to go in and blow away all references to the DNS zones
in AD so I can try from scratch.
Click to expand...

AD Integrated zones are stored in the Domain NC Partition. Using ADSIEdit,
drill down in the Domain NC, Services, MSDNS.

Are you getting any replication errors, Directory Service erros or NTFRS
errors? Also, can you post an ipconfig /all from both DCs? Like to take a
look at your actual config to see if we can optimize it. Also, please state
your AD DNS domain name.

Thanks!


--
Ace

Please direct all replies to the newsgroup so all can benefit.
This posting is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties and confers no
rights.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2000, MCSE+I, MCSA, MCT, MVP
Microsoft Windows MVP - Active Directory
 
What do you by "the zone disappears"? Is that in the MMC? Or do you
mean that the zone files in (from memory, not sure of the location)
"<systemroot>\system32\etc\dns" disappear?Just clarifying?

Incidentally, I think that you will have to create a new ADI DNS on
the second machine, but empty, but Santhosh says otherwise, so I may
well be wrong.

Cheers,

Cliff

(MVP)
 
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