Building a Nameserver
In this section, I'll guide you through the process of actually creating a nameserver, and then in the remainder of the chapter I'll add to the functionality of the nameserver to prepare it for use with Active Directory.
Nameservers need a constant connection to the Internet and a non-changing IP, either set statically on the server itself or delivered consistently through a DHCP reservation. The machine you're building out as a nameserver doesn't need to be that powerful; a fast Pentium III machine with 512 MB or so of RAM will be more than sufficient.
Tip
In the following examples, I will use the fictitious domain name hasselltech.net, with the also fictitious machine name "colossus" and IP address 192.168.0.5. You can, of course, replace these as appropriate when following along with your own computer.
The first step is to install the nameserver software onto your Windows Server 2008 computer. To do so, follow these steps:
Open Server Manager.
In the left pane, click Roles, and then in the right pane, click Add.
Click Next in the Add Roles Wizard.
Find DNS Server in the list, check its box, and click Next.
Click Next on the "Introduction to DNS Server" screen.
Click Install, wait for the process to complete, and then close the Add Server Roles box.
Tip
If you have your computer set up to receive an IP address via DHCP, the DNS Server role installation will complain loudly that DNS isn't intended to work on dynamically assigned IP addresses. For this example, we can ...