DNS over Branch Office VPN

[magicrjm]

In Chicago I have a domain controller running active directory and an exchange server. In the Chicago location there is a watchguard X500 and in branch office A there is a watchguard X500 with a BOVPN license configured. Branch Office A can ping the IP address of the DC and Exchange server in Chicago, but can not ping server names. I configured the DNS of a workstation in Branch Office A to the primary DNS server in Chicago, however the workstation in Branch Office A can only ping the IP addresses of Chicago's DC and Exchange server. What I am trying to accomplish is to setup workstations in the branch office to use the exchange server in Chicago. I CAN get this working by adding the IP and server name in the lmhost/host file on the local machine. I want to avoid using this method. I would rather have a central location that all the workstations in branch office A point to. Some solutions that I have come up with is setting up a Domain Controller at the Chicago location to ship to the branch office for the workstations to point to. This is not cost efficient as there 6 branch locations. Is it possible to provide DNS resolution to the Chicago servers at the branch office without using the local lmhost file or shipping a DNS server?

Ryan

 

[lhuegele]

Have you tried using fully qualified domain names, and not just server names? I'm assuming that the 2 branch offices are on different domains.

When we wanted our branch office to have DNS records for our main office, we simply created a secondary DNS zone on the branch office's DNS server and imported the zone from the main office DNS server. That way, DNS queries didn't have to traverse the firewall/VPN tunnel and the remote office could resolve machine names. They had to use fully qualified names though (i.e. server.domain.us instead of just using "server") but it worked for our needs.

You might also want to watch the logs on your firewalls. Perhaps the DNS traffic on port 53 isn't allowed or something like that.

Good luck.