DNS servers. Primary and Secondary. Setup, issues.

[bshbsh]

Can anyone point me to a good link which shows how to setup 2 Win2K3 DNS servers, one primary and one secondary. The 2 DNS servers will use standard zones for an internal site (like site.edu) which hosts the A records for the computers in the site and these zones transfer from primary to secondary. Each client has the primary and secondary in their IP settings, So if we turn off the primary, then the secondary will resolve queries for the zone and forward queries for sites as yahoo.com to external DNS servers. These servers will only resolve queries and do nothing else.
They are not part of any AD and will not be either.

(1) I understand there are many and I have used quite a few of them, but I wanted something which was good in your opinion. I have 2 servers which I can use.

(2) Also, how do I export an existing DNS config and (separately) zones and records to another DNS server?

(3) Is there any particular for the clients (mostly XP) so that they look at the secondary if the primary fails to respond. For example is the primary does not respond queries for a minute, can it be made to check the secondary.

(4) How/Where do I check logs to see if the secondary is performing as it should, that it is recieving the lookup queries and responding to them, when the primary is down. I guess I am looking on how to enable debug logging and check it.

The reason I need this at all is due to a unresolved thread, thread950-1421953. "2 external DNS servers which are not part of the any AD domain. I have set them up on 2 windows
2003 servers, one as primary and the other as secondary. I have set up zone transfers and I followed a how-to article setting the primary and the secondary. The setup seems to be fine and the zone transfers are working. But when the primary goes down, the secondary is not able to respond to the requests".

Please advice.
Thanks.

 

[theravager]

Assuming this is dns resolution for internal clients its just a matter of setting up the secondary dns server on the clients probibly via dhcp. Or alternately listing the secondary as an additional forwarder if you have a ad zone in there somewhere.

If its external dns, generally a lot of places go with two primary zones and manually edit any changes due to the fact that generally inet facing dns doesn't change much.

Hard to say as there not much detail on what you are trying to accomplish. Having said that there nothing difficult with dns in any scenario but some more information is required to help out if one of the above guesses isn't what you are looking for.

 

[bshbsh]

This is external DNS, not AD integrated. I have set it before, but for some reason the primary <-> secondary failover is not working. So I amtrying to set it up anew and wanted to links that would help.
Thanks,

 

[theravager]

http://www.intodns.com/

This site will check your existing setting and hopefully tell you what is wrong.

 

[bshbsh]

Actually, the DNS in question does not have access to the external web. Is there something I can download and check?
Thanks.

 

[theravager]

That site you just type in the domain name and it will check it from the outside perspective and tell you what is or is not working.

It can be done from just a standard client.

 

[bshbsh]

Thanks. I did check, unfortunately, it is not able to get to the domain in question as it is behind the firewall.

 

[theravager]

Assuming its getting the correct ip to your name servers then you have to allow dns traffic through your firewall to the nominated nameservers

 

[bshbsh]

Thanks. Will try that.