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DHCP Options and DNS
Setting up DNS correctly in a Windows 2000 server environment
faq96-3017
FAQ : Setting up DNS correctly in a Windows 2000 server environment
This document details how you should set up a DNS on a Windows 2000 network.
What you shouldn't do
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Clients should not have the ISPs DNS server configured in their DNS settings.
A ISPs DNS server should not be setup as a Windows 2000 servers Primary or Backup DNS server.
What you should do
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Setup all clients to use the internal DNS server to resolve. The best way of achieving this is using DHCP.
Any servers should be configured to use the internal DNS servers IP (NOTE: DO NOT USE A LOOPBACK ADDRESS 127.0.0.1) If you have more than one DNS server in the environment - add these as the backup DNS servers.
The DNS Forwarders should be setup to use the ISPs DNS servers to resolve external addresses.
The steps below show how to setup DNS forwarding and create smooth running of DNS
1] To Remove the Root DNS Zone
In DNS Manager, expand the DNS Server object. Expand the Forward Lookup Zones folder.
Right-click the "." zone, and then click Delete.
2] Configing Forwarders
In DNS Manager, right-click the DNS Server object, and then click Properties.
Click the Forwarders tab.
Click to select the Enable Forwarders check box.
In the IP address box, type the first DNS server to which you want to forward, and then click Add.
(When forwarding to a DNS such as your ISP make sure you add both the primary and backup DNS servers)
3] Disabling the DNS binding on public network interfaces
(You can safely ignore this step if you are only using non internet facing interfaces on the server)
By default DNS is bound to all adapters in the server. This causes a problem if you have a public interface connected to the server - such as a modem, cable, or NIC connection.
First look in the DNS records and delete any host (A) records for your server that has a public address.
In DNS Manager, right-click the DNS Server object, and then click Properties. Click on the interfaces tab.
Under Listen On, select Only the following IP addresses.
Type the addresses of only your internal network cards.
4] Resolving your external website
(You can safely ignore this step if your internal domain isn't the same name as your external one)
You need to setup an alias for WWW on your local DNS to resolve to the IP address the website is hosted.
This also applies to any external server you are trying to access using your domain mail eg. mail/smtp etc)
In DNS Manager, expand the server and go into forward lookup zones and select your domain.
Right click on the domain and select 'new alias'. In the Alias Name type www. In the "Fully qualified name for target host" type the FQND of the ISPs hosting server (ie. webhost.force9.net).
FAQ
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Q : The Root DNS Zone (.) record doesn't exist?
A : Don't worry continue onto the next step - it simply means the server isn't configured as a root server.
Q : What is a DNS forwarder?
A : This feature forwards DNS requests to external servers. If a DNS server cannot find a resource record in its zones, it can send the request to another DNS server for additional attempts at resolution. A common scenario might be to configure forwarders to your ISP's DNS servers.
A DNS server that is setup as a DNS forwarder can handle both internal & external queries.
Q : My server is currently a forwarder how do I revert back to a root server?
A : Create a "." in the Forward Lookup Zone, restart the DNS service or reboot the server.
Q : I haven't got DNS installed how would I install it?
A : From the Control Panel go to Add/Remove Programs -> Add/Remove Windows Components. Go into Networking Services and tick Domain Name System (DNS)
Q : I'm setting up a new DC and having problems?
A : Make sure the DNS setting in TCP/IP properties is set to the internal DNS server - ie. the current DC.
Last edited by Scott Smith; 21st January 2005 at 11:07.
I have a W2K3 standard server with DNS running on it. I want to for the name hb.ecreditunion.org to the IP 10.0.0.3. How do I do this?
10.0.0.3 is an internal private IP address. This address is not valid on the internet. No internet DNS system will resolve a 10.0.0.0 subnet address.
I assume therefore that the address in question is internal. For DNS on your server to resolve internal addresses there must be 'A' records for each internal address. You can add these manually or use DHCP to do it for you.
Manually
I've created this list using Win2003 server. Win2000 should be similar. WinNT will have a similar process but the process details will be different.
Go into DNS (in Administrative tools) on the server.
Drill down to your local forward lookup zone. This should contain at least an NS record refering to your server.
Select the folder representing the local forward lookup zone (for example the folder may be labelled "mydomain.local") and click on the Action button (or right click on the folder) and select "New Host (A)".
Enter the name (the node name not the full name) and IP address in the input boxes provided (you can leave the other controls as they are).
Click on the Add Host button.
The node name is the unique (within your domain) name of the computer or resource. So for www.mydomain.local, the domain zone name is mydomain.local, and the node is www. So you need an A host record in mydomain.local for the node www. If you enter a node name "www.mydomain.local" you end up with a resolved name of "www.mydomain.local.mydomain.local.
For the address you use, if your local domain is not "ecreditunion.org" you will have to first create a forward lookup zone for ecreditunion.org, and then add an A host for the node "hb".
Note that this method can be used to create a DNS record for an external resource that is using your internal domain space. So if your local domain is mydomain.com, and you want to add www.mydomain.com (hosted on the internet by your ISP) to DNS so your internal users can access your external website, add a A host for the node www, to you mydomain.com forward lookup zone, and enter the internet IP address against it.
Automatically
You need to connect DHCP to DNS. Then each time DHCP hands out an IP address to your local computers, it will update DNS with a matching A record. This make the administrator's life much easier.
There are instructions in the help system on how to do this (in DNS manager, right click on the computer icon and select help from the menu. The help instruction (in Win2003) is at: DNS > How To: > Install and configure clients > enable DNS for DHCP-enabled clients). Post back if you need help with it. It is definitely worth doing.
However, note that it will only sort out the records for computers that use DHCP. If you have some system using static IPs (servers for example), you will need to add their A records manually as wells as using DHCP.
Wow I totally missed the question. For some reason I thought he couldnt surf to his external Domain. Now I'm wondering if I was even in the correct post.
Easy thing to miss. What you put was good. hb.ecreditunion.org is an internet address. Your advice may be the way to go after all if the 10.0.0.0 address was a mistake.
We did it as you instructed manually on the dns server and then we flushed the dns on the local computers. It works! We added the node hb to the ecreditunion.org A record.
