2000 DNS/child-parent domain problems

[Josh Norris]

We have recently upgraded our network from some NT 4 and
some 2000 servers to all 2000 servers. We have a
collection of workgroups right now. We are trying to go
to a Domain only enviroment. there were several
stipulations, such as we wanted to have our groupings
still show up in network places, so we made a DC for every
previous workgroup and joined them all up to the root
domain. so we have 6 child domains from one root domain
now, and although all the servers joined up to the domain,
they cannot all see one another. for example, in one of
our domain Controllers, i can see and add users to a
share, from any of the domains we have, but from another
of our DC's i can only see it's domain and the parent
domain. It will give me a "Server is not operational" or
a "RPC Server not found" error It is a very complex
problem seemingly, any help would be appreciated. I have
DNS configured, and it works as far as resolving internet
names, but i had to add each server as a new host in the
DNS MMC by hand in order to have nslookup work.

any help would be appreciated.
Josh Norris
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Edward Gomes [MSFT]]

Please make sure your DNS is setup right for this.
Here are some of ways you can do this. In both cases you should set the
dynamic update to yes. Also you can do
AD integrated if you want. Id you make DNS server AD integrated, then it
will replicate the DNS information to the
other DCs in the same domain.

1. You could have one DNS server and point everyone in every domain (Root
and Child) to point to that one DNS server,
or you could also add some secondary DNS servers and point some to
primary and some to secondary, but depending
on the replication schedule it could take some time to resolve names if
there are changes that hasn't replicated yet.

2. You could host one DNS server in each domain and on the root, just
delegate out to the child domain zones to the respective
DNS server in the proper child domain and on the child domain set
forwarder back to the root.

3. You could also host DNS in each domain as it's primary and then set a
secondary zone for all the others and do this on
every domain.

The white paper for DNS also has more information on this.
To download this white paper, visit the following Microsoft
Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howitworks/communications/nameadrmgmt/w2kdns.asp