Child Domain DNS Setup

[stevenew1977]

Hello

I wan to know how to correctly setup DNS with a about 5 child domains over a wan.
At the moment i have one AD server that handles all DNS traffic and it always crashes after about 3 months of use, with 5 child domains and about 140 pc's

Do i need to make one primary DNS server and have load balancing or have client computers pointing to some other DNS server??
not too sure any suggestions welcomed,
thanks

 

[ShackDaddy]

Do you have any other servers in your network? If you do, you could install DNS services on it and make it a DNS e of your DC. I'm not sure that your zones could be AD-integrated in that scenario. If you set up another server to be the slave, you could make it the primary DNS server for all the clients, and it would take the load off of the server that's been crashing.

Tell us more about what "over a WAN" means. Are all the clients connecting to the DNS server over a WAN? Are there multiple remote sites? Multiple servers? More than one DC? Are there actually multiple domains involved: how are the child domain's implemented/utilized?

Why do you think that the every-three-months-crash is DNS-related? 140 clients is a very small load.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[stevenew1977]

Hi there, yes i have 5 other 2003 servers over a wan which point to the primary AD for DNS resolution
So the 5 other servers have individual clients directly connected to them.

So really my configuration is One primary AD server which runs DNS, all clients point to this DNS server, locally and over high speed wan links.

Would there be a more efficient way of setting up the child domains running their own DNS and using a secondary zone??

hope that make sense
thanks

 

[ShackDaddy]

Sorry to ask more questions, but are all the client really members of a single domain, or are they joined as members of the child domains? Are those 5 servers each DC's of their own domains?

It doesn't sound like it, since they'd have to all be running DNS to be DCs. You don't really HAVE to have child domains either. The best thing would probably be to have a single AD domain with six sites set up in the domain, and a DC in each one, running DNS. The clients would point at their local servers for DNS, they would log onto the domain from their local servers, and you could configure the five DNS servers to forward DNS queries to the central server.

But I'm not trying to rearchitect your network, I'd like to help you optimize what you've got, so tell me aout the domains and DC's.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[stevenew1977]

thanks for your response.
This is the way its been setup by someone else
Yes the Main Server that has Exchange runs DNS.
The clients in that location point to that DNS Server (LOCAL LAN) City localtion

Remote location:
The remote clients are in different states and are added to AD as child domains named based on their location.

So there are 5 child domains in total.
All clients point to the Central DNS server in the city that runs exchange. These guys also are running on different subnets.

The main problem ive been finding is that ad replication to other domains can fail or not be reliable and with exchange creating mailboxes to child domains can be very unreliable.

Each Child domain has approx 15-20 people per site
The Child Domains have DNS installed, the primary zone for each CD is their local domain and they also have a secondary zone with is copied from the MASTER DC zone.
Clients get the Central DNS (City) for resolution.

Hope that helps in some way
Thanks