DNS problems in Server 2003/2008

[fruitloopy]

When I took over as IT manager there was a SBS 2008 server in the headoffice. In DNS there is an entry for remote.companyname.co.uk in the forward lookup zones and this server is listed as SOA.

I have moved some of their users to another office down the road so I bought a new server and installed with Server 2003 Standard. I joined it to the existing domain and then promoted it to a domain controller with dcpromo. Then I moved the server along with the PC's to the new office.

Once I moved them over there seemed to be problems with emails. We have set it up so they get their emails via RPC over HTTP but I think a DNS entry is causing problems with accessing the "remote.companyname.co.uk".

All of the PC's seemed to work ok except for one. When I checked NSLOOKUP for "remote.companyname.co.uk" it shows the remote (newer) server as the SOA. Replication between servers is taking place over VPN. On the headoffice (older) server it shows itself as the SOA and has an NS record for the new server.

I have tried changing the SOA record for the newer server to the other but it changes back again instantly. If I delete the zone from the forward lookup zones it deletes it from the remote server as well.

How can I tell the PC's in the remote office that in order to contact "remote.companyname.co.uk" it should go to a specific IP address? How do I make sure the headoffice server remains as the SOA for this zone?

Thanks.

 

[TheMisio]

Fruitloopy,

I'm not sure I understand your requirement correctly, but I think you need to set up a stub DNS zone.

Please look here:

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/DNS_Stub_Zones.html

Regards,

Michael

 

[fruitloopy]

I tried to change the remote.companyname.co.uk zone on the remote server to a stub to make sure it wasnt authoritive for that domain and to make sure the headoffice server was the SOA for remote.companyname.co.uk but this seemed to replicate to the headoffice server and change that to a stub!

I dont know if I have setup DNS correctly. I need the remote servers DNS database to be writeable as it is on a remote network so has several PC's attached which are not attached to the headoffice network. I want it to be authorative for the company.local domain but not authorative for the remote.companyname.co.uk zone.

I am beginning to think I should have just created a new domain rather than trying to be clever by having a secondary domain controller as a backup in a remote location.