DNS on Windows Server 2003, 3rd Edition

Adding Resource Records

Now that we’ve created Movie U.’s zones, we can add information about all its machines. Each machine requires two resource records: an A record in the movie.edu zone to provide name-to-address mapping and a PTR record in the appropriate in-addr.arpa zone to provide address-to-name mapping. Adding the A record is intuitive, but it’s easy to forget about the PTR record. The DNS console makes the job easier with the New Host command, which creates an A record and a PTR record in one pass.

Select a forward-mapping zone (like movie.edu) and choose Action → New Host (A). Enter the name of the host and its IP address. To create the PTR record as well, you also need to check the Create associated pointer (PTR) record box. The window looks like the one in Figure 4-21.

Figure 4-21. The New Host window

You’ll notice that we typed a relative domain name (robocop) and not a fully qualified domain name (robocop.movie.edu). The DNS console is being helpful here and saving you some typing: it appends the domain name of the zone selected in the left pane (i.e., the zone that you’re adding the new host to) to create a fully qualified domain name as shown.

Aliases

Looking back at Movie U.’s host table in the beginning of the chapter, you’ll see that some hosts have aliases. (The aliases are any additional names after the first one listed.) For example, terminator is also known ...