Having installed windows 200 now an a reasonable scale with both standard server and Advanced server I am still not happy with the way Microsoft implements its DNS. For example when you install the root domain controller and install DNS the system does not automaticcaly insert a reverse DNS lookup entry for the serevr so when you do an NSlookup it can find itself.This requres you to manually enter a reverse lookup zone and then add a PTR record for the server itself. If you then only run TCP/IP and try to add other servers to the domain they attempt to identify the domain using the netbios name wich come back with an error. The only way I have found that you can get around this is to install WINS in order to resolve the name initially. I had thought about putting an alias in the DNS for the netbios name of the domain but have not tried this yet.

Has anyone else had this problem or can anyone point out what I am doing wrong. TIA

After a number of heartaches, I have found that defining and distributing an lmhost file with the address of my DC's to the various clients and member servers alleviates the common name resolution problems during installs, upgrades, and other network changes.

As far as the Reverse Zone, it is unfortunate that the MS 2000 DNS still suffers the same affliction as the NT4 DNS.



dxd

I have finally found out how to get around this problem, the primary DNS server needs to point to itself even if it is a delegate of a non windows 2000 DNS server. Once this is done the windows 2000 DNS become much more reliable and there is no need for WINS or host files

One of the major problems with Microsoft 2000 DNS is that since it is dynamic, you can overwrite the root domain very easily. For example, if you have a domain called joe.blow and someone else in your environment decides to bring up a domain called joe.blow, you domain has now been deleted from the DNS table. This is actually a feature to make it easier to build your environments. Granted if you have tight security this will not happen but in our lab last year it did. This is still an issue in RTM.

Ron Valkenburg
ronald.valkenburg@ey.com
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