Learning Windows Server 2003

Active Directory-Integrated Zones

Up to this point, I’ve treated the Windows Server 2003 DNS service as a traditional nameserver, mostly compliant with the relevant RFCs, which can act in both primary and secondary “modes” for a zone. However, Windows Server 2003 offers a third mode specific to Windows that, although not listed in an RFC, offers some distinct advantages if you’ve made an infrastructure investment in Active Directory and Windows.

The third mode, Active Directory-integrated DNS, offers two plusses over traditional zones. For one, the fault tolerance built into Active Directory eliminates the need for primary and secondary nameservers. Effectively, all nameservers using Active Directory-integrated zones are primary nameservers. This has a huge advantage for the use of dynamic DNS as well: namely, the wide availability of nameservers that can accept registrations. Recall that domain controllers and workstations register their locations and availability to the DNS zone using dynamic DNS. In a traditional DNS setup, only one type of nameserver can accept these registrations—the primary server because it has the only read/write copy of a zone. By creating an Active Directory-integrated zone, all Windows Server 2003 nameservers that store that zone in Active Directory can accept a dynamic registration, and the change will be propagated using Active Directory multi-master replication. All you need to do to set up this scenario is install Windows Server 2003 on a machine, ...