Help With Setting Up a Secondary DNS Server

[deejay33]

Hello All,

We have a Windows Domain with two Windows 2003 domain controllers in it. One of those domain controllers also acts as our internal DNS server. Well it locked up last night so this morning DNS was not working in the office. I have decided to setup our second domain controller as a secondary DNS server.

I went through a Microsoft "How To" describing the process.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816518

Basically I,
1. Went to the primary DNS server and added the second domain controller on the Name Server tab in both the Forward and Reverse Zones.
2. Installed DNS on the second domain controller using Add\Remove Windows Components.

After that is where I had issues. The next step listed in the document is to add the zone to the secondary server as a secondary zone. When I tried it said the zone already existed. I looked and is was there but I noticed the SOA was itself, not the primary DNS server. I checked the primary DNS server and it still also has the zone with itself listed as the SOA.

So my question is how did the zone get copied to the new server on it's own (without me going through the Add Zone wizard)? Why was I unable to add the zone as a secondary zone on the new server? Do they both think they are the primary DNS server? Is that a problem?

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[deejay33]

OK. I spoke with another system admin and the theory we have is the secondary DNS server "auto populated" the zone because it was a domain controller.

So if that is the case, does anyone know if it is a problem to have DNS setup on two domain controllers?

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[normntwrk]

I have it set up that way and haven't had any issues

Norm

 

[Noway2]

I can't speak for the Windows portion (domain controllers), but having a secondary DNS autopopulate from the primary sounds correct. Actually, this is normally how it works.

Whether or not the secondary would point to itself as the SOA, or the primary DNS, I can't say.

When you say that you "had issues" what are the issues?

 

[deejay33]

By issues, I just meant that I was unable to follow the Microsoft "How To" article after that point. This was because the DNS auto populated instead of allowing me to add a new secondary zone.

So far things have been working great. I have tested downing each server and the clients continue to resolve DNS properly so the redundancy is working.

Thanks to both of you for your comments!

Daniel