DNS and 2003 AD integration qustion

[ali2009]

We are currently in the planning stage for AD migration
from NT 4.0 to AD 2003

We have 2 major sites and 10 satellites sites in the US

Currently we have 3 Win 2000 servers which provide DNS,
WINS and DHCP.

We are trying to figure out the best way of integrating
DNS into AD.

One way we are looking into, is when migrating AD on the
PDC is to take out any DNS references under IP
configuration on the PDC, this way AD will creates all AD
related records. Then , we would transfer the zones from
the current Win 2000 DNS servers into AD 1st DC and setup
zone transfer between DDNS zone on the AD DC and non AD-
DNS zone on the win 2000 DNS server which we want to keep
as is.


My question, what's the down side to this plan, possible
issues or is there a better way of doing it?

 

[Steve Duff [MVP]]

Understand that you cannot have two different
DNS servers servicing queries under Win2K.

So one or the other of these two DNS servers
will have to forward to the other in order for a
client to "see" the union of all zones hosted on both.

Except for extremely large sites where other
issues come in to play, I prefer to have all
DNS servers reflecting the same information.
This facilitates redundancy and maintenance.

Steve Duff, MCSE
Ergodic Systems, Inc.

 

[Michael Johnston [MSFT]]

Since the goal is to create a Windows 2003 domain, you will want to use a windows 2003 DC as the DNS server. This will greatly improve your DNS
configuration. On the first DC, install DNS and point the machine to itself only for DNS. If the Windows 2000 DNS server currently hosts the zone that will
become your AD zone, configure a secondary on the 2003 server to transfer the records over. Set the zone on the 2003 server to Primary and promo the box.
You can then set the Windows 2000 DNS servers to secondaries of the 2003 box. Any additional zones on the 2000 side can be moved over to the 2003
server
in a similar manner. If you don't move these zones, you will need to configure selective forwarding on the 2003 server for these zones.

Thank you,
Mike Johnston
Microsoft Network Support

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