New DC Secondary DNS 1

[DJCopa]

Hi There.

Just setting up a second DC and want it to work as 'backup' for DNS. I DCPROMO'd the server OK, and then installed DNS - It synced all zones successfully from our first DC.
There are no issues on the network, but I notice that the 2nd DC DNS is not setup as Secondary and wondered if this would casue an issue. Should I have added DNS first, setup Secondary DNS and configured the Zone Transfer, and then DCPROMO'd server?

May not be an issue at all, but keen to get it working correctly from a DR perspective.

Thanks in adavnce for any help provided.

 

[58sniper]

As long as you have AD integrated DNS, then you're fine. Make sure your DHCP server is giving out both DNS servers as part of the lease handshake. Make sure forwarders are configured on both servers.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author The Complete Reference: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

 

[DJCopa]

Cheers 58sniper - Have added each server IP in each others Forwarder - DHCP had been done.

Thanks.

 

[58sniper]

You don't put the other DNS servers in your environment as forwarders. You put public DNS servers there.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author The Complete Reference: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

 

[DJCopa]

Aha - Won't need that then. We have all that set on our Firewall for Web Access, and we use MessageLabs for all email.

Thanks again for the reply - Looks like once I'd set up the first DC with in AD, and then added further DC's with DNS, DNS configures itself - Excellent!

 

[58sniper]

You MUST put forwarders in your DNS server. You can't leave them blank. Workstations should get the address of an AD DNS server as part of their DHCP handshake, and the DNS server should forward external requests to an external DNS server. If you do it any other way, you're asking for problems.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author The Complete Reference: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

 

[DJCopa]

Never had that before, and haven't had any problems, but reading up on it it makes sense - Thanks again for the help. We have 2 other sites in our Domain who have a local DC with DNS - I will add this to them as well.

Again, appreciate the time you've given here!

 

[Cstorms]

You dont need forwarders if your using the default root hints. If you want to use forwarders you can delete these root hints and point it to wherever works for you, including places like opendns or whatever your isp is.

Cory

 

[58sniper]

You're not supposed to use root hints. Client computers (including your DNS servers) should NEVER be making direct DNS queries to the root servers.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author The Complete Reference: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

 

[Cstorms]

Agreed, just clearing the air why he may have not seen a problem with this in his environment. As per best practice Pat is correct.

Cory