Migrate to new DNS Server in new Domain

[mRgEE]

Our company recently merged with another company and we are migrating into their AD domain. I need to move from our DNS servers that all hosts are currently using to a new DNS server that is installed on the new domains local DC.
There is currently a 2 way trust between our domain and their domain.

I need best practices for moving the DNS service.
I know that I must configure DHCP to point hosts to the new DNS servers, I must manually add the new ip addresses for the new DNS server in static IP settings on our servers but I am unsure if I have to do zone transfers from our current DNS server to the new one? Can I setup the new DNS server to act as a secondary DNS server for our current primary server that would merge the records and zones into the new DNS service?

I have tried searching google and technet but havn't found anything that relates to our scenario.
our current domain is xyz.com and the DC is server 2003 running DNS. The domain we are migrating to is abc.com and the DC is also server 2003 which will take over DNS and is also now running our DHCP service. We plan to migrate and then get rid of our current domain xyz.com.
Any links, resources, advice is greatly appreciated. Also any pitfalls to watch out for?

 

[ShackDaddy]

I would set up the abc.com DNS server as a secondary for the xyz.com domain, and have DHCP just give out the abc.com DNS server to the clients. You may lose the ability to dynamically update DNS with your clients, but at this point that's probably not too valuable a feature. The good thing is that the clients will be established as far as name resolution and ready to migrate without any name resolution glitches.

I don't think you will need to add any static entries to the xyz.com DNS server if you configure it to forward queries related to the abc.com domain to the abc.com DNS server. That way the abc.com server actually has all the records it needs for the future, and the xyz.com server is able to easily query for information, and you don't have to muddy the water with additional records.

You may want to programatically add the abc.com DNS suffix to your xyz.com hosts to make it easier for them to resolve non-FQDN'd hostnames from the abc.com domain. You can use a fairly simple script to reset the suffix search list on the clients.


ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[lhuegele]

We went through the same thing last year. Here's what we did:

OLD DOMAIN=Our domain before the merger
NEW DOMAIN=Domain of the company that purchased us

We created secondary forward lookup DNS zones in each domain for the other domain (OLD DOMAIN had a secondary zone for NEW DOMAIN, and vise versa)

Then, after all servers and workstations were migrated to the NEW DOMAIN, we modified our DHCP settings to point the workstations to the new DNS servers.

Good luck,