Hostname DNS?

[bcraig]

This may or may not be an easy question, but how to do this escapes me.

I have windows 2000 advanced server running DNS for my network. I would like to have the DNS server do a resolution for a host name like

http://testserver

and have it resolve to an IP outside my network. I know I can do this with a hosts file on the individual PC, but for the life of me, I can not figure out wehre it should go in my DNS server. In the DNS snapin, I have, under forward lookup zones, one for my network.local, and two for my companies domain names. I know I can add one under any of those, and have it work as testserver.domain.com, however I would like just the hostname to resolve to the IP..

Thanks in advance!

 

[guinnessman]

Add it to the Root hints.

Remember, it's all just ones and zeros!

 

[bcraig]

Ok, this is totally new to me, so I must be missing something. I go into the root hints tab, add the server as testserver and the IP that I want, save, restart DNS, flushdns on the client computer, but it still wont resolve? Am I missing something?

 

[kmcferrin]

I have no idea why you'd go in via the root hints.

I would just add another host A-record to my forward lookup zone mapped to the IP address. While you have indicated that

http://testserver.domain.com

resolves, in most cases just

http://testserver

should also resolve to that IP address. In most domains the domain suffix is automatically appended.

We did the same thing with our OWA server. I have an A-record for MAIL in the DNS for a remote site pointing to our OWA server. From within their network they can type

http://mail

and still get to the server (of course they are in the same domain as we are).

 

[bcraig]

I have 4 different domains that my internal DNS server has records set up for. And no, when I go in and add a host record (A) to the domain, I can resolve testserver.domain.com but not testserver. You would think that it should, but it does not, and I am still at a loss as to the correct way to proceed with this.

 

[bcraig]

Ok, further digging and such, this is what I found out. I added the testserver host to my LAN AD Domain tree in the DNS server. So I have, under forward lookup zones, company domain (type active directory integrated), company.com (type Standard Primary), and comany.ca (type standard primary). I put testserver under the company domain, as a host. My DHCP server does not push out any DNS Suffix to any clients, so when I do an ipconfig /all on an XP machine, it says Primary DNS Suffix is: company

So from the XP machines, I can ping testserver with no problem, but from any windows 98 machines on the network, I can not. Any ideas?

 

[bcraig]

Issue resolved.

Added the DNS Suffix to the DHCP server to push out to the clients, and the 98 machines now can ping testserver.

Thanks all for the suggestions!