DNS suffix search order

[Ziek]

I'm doing an upgrade of my NT domain to 2003. All my clients have a DNS
search order that's already configured as follows:

company.com
outsidecompany.com
aquired_company.com

I have been told that this search order must not change, however when we
perform the domain upgrade, we will be installing a new PDC which will
create a domain name of : corp.aquired_company.com .

Meaning, it will be a subdomain and delegation of the zone
"aquired_company.com" , which is the last suffix in the client's search
order.

Is this going to negatively impact the client workstations? Will they be
able to discover the DC's upon a startup without any configuration changes?

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht Sr. [MVP]]

In

I'm doing an upgrade of my NT domain to 2003. All my clients have a
DNS search order that's already configured as follows:

company.com
outsidecompany.com
aquired_company.com

I have been told that this search order must not change, however when
we perform the domain upgrade, we will be installing a new PDC which
will create a domain name of : corp.aquired_company.com .

Meaning, it will be a subdomain and delegation of the zone
"aquired_company.com" , which is the last suffix in the client's
search order.

Is this going to negatively impact the client workstations? Will
they be able to discover the DC's upon a startup without any
configuration changes?

It will only negatively impact the workstations if you want to resolve
single-label host names in corp.aquired_company.com.
If you expect to resolve these single-label host names in
corp.aquired_company.com, you will need to add this suffix to the DNS suffix
search list.
You can also make sure the clients are registered in the aquired_company.com
zone by using this as the connection specific DNS suffix and that the zone
for this domain supports DDNS registration or manually adding the records to
the zone..

As for the clients being able to locate the DCs at start up (or any other
time), make sure the clients are configured to use only DNS servers that
support locating the AD domain DNS zone.

 

[Ziek]

But if the clients want to resolve single lable host names, if the 1st
suffix order doesn't resolve the name, won't it attempt the second suffix,
then the third?

Also, for client machine startup, the DNS servers to which clients are
pointing to have forwarding enabled to forward to a top level dns server,
and the top level dns server has delegated the AD zone to the DC's,
therefore, will the clients experience an issue with this?

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht Sr. [MVP]]

In

But if the clients want to resolve single lable host names, if the 1st
suffix order doesn't resolve the name, won't it attempt the second
suffix, then the third?

All DNS suffixes will be searched, will the clients be registered in one of
these zones?

Also, for client machine startup, the DNS servers to which clients are
pointing to have forwarding enabled to forward to a top level dns
server, and the top level dns server has delegated the AD zone to the
DC's, therefore, will the clients experience an issue with this?

As long as the DNS server supports finding the AD domain zone, you can use
it in the client. Usually this means using the DC for DNS, but it is not
required as long as the DNS server can locate the AD domain every time.

 

[Ziek]

will the clients be registered in one of the zones?

Well, I hope they register themselves in the Active Directory zone, but I
that's just a hope.. Since this is an in-place upgrade from NT, and the
clients are already configured to have hostnames of "company.com", even
though this isn't the active directory zone name, i'm hoping that somehow
the client will understand which zone to register themselves in..

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht Sr. [MVP]]

In

will the clients be registered in one of the zones?

Well, I hope they register themselves in the Active Directory zone,
but I that's just a hope.. Since this is an in-place upgrade from NT,
and the clients are already configured to have hostnames of
"company.com", even though this isn't the active directory zone name,
i'm hoping that somehow the client will understand which zone to
register themselves in..

Win2k and later clients support self registration in DNS using the primary
and connection specific DNS suffix. The ipconfig /all will tell you these
suffixes. This means that these clients can conceivably register in at least
two zones, one for the Primary DNS suffix and one for the connection
specific suffix, although if the client has more than one NIC, each NIC can
have its own suffix.