Chapter 1
Introduction to DNS in Windows Server 2003 1.1 Introduction There are three scenarios in which your network needs DNS. Firstly, to find Active Directory resources such as Global Catalog Servers and also Domain Controllers that authenticate Logon or Kerberos requests. Secondly to locate pages on the internet, and thirdly, mundane task for example, connecting to a printer share. DNS makes it possible for clients to access network resources using alphanumeric names rather than pure IP addresses. Unlike WINS, DNS is hierarchical, with advent of Windows 2000 DNS became dynamic DNS. In practical terms, it means that clients can update their own DNS Server records automatically, thus reducing the administrative load. The killer reason for implementing DNS is that Active Directory relies on DNS for finding Global Catalog, Kerberos and Logon Servers. Before you install DNS on a production network you need to answer a whole series of questions. For example Will your DNS name match our email domain? Who will be in charge of DNS, you or must you rely on a Unix department? One 'Litmus Test' for a difficult topic is the number of specialist terms a component uses. My rule is the more unusual words and acronyms, the more difficult the subject is to master. DNS passes this ' difficulty ' test with flying colours. For instance you need to understand, Namespace, Authoritative, Recursive, and Incremental to name just a few of the DNS keywords. As you learn about DNS Server watch out for ways to increase your computing vocabulary.
1.2 What's new in Windows Server 2003 DNS The big improvements in Microsoft's DNS came in Windows 2000, however Server 2003 has a surprising number of neat new dynamic DNS features.
1.2 New DNS Topics for Windows Server 2003 • • • • • •
DNS Stub Zones _MSDCS Zones Conditional Forwarding Debug Logging DNSLint Utility Universal Caching
1.3.1 DNS Stub Zones Stub Zones are rather like DNS Secondary zones. The similarity is that both Zones have a read only copy of the server that is authoritative for a child DNS domain. The difference is that Stub 1