GPO and DNS settings

[Raffi Mesdjian]

Is there a way to manage DNS settings on client
workstations via AD GPO?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bobby]

Unfortunately there is not(of which I am aware). You can certainly configure
your DHCP server with specific DNS settings(IPs, suffix) within Scope
Options that your clients will receive upon acknowledgement of the new
address. You can also use scripting to modify the registry to force your
client workstations to obtain specific DNS
information(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Param
eters\Interfaces\{xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx\NameServer}.

Regards,

BT

 

[Andrew Mitchell]

Is there a way to manage DNS settings on client
workstations via AD GPO?

You can use a GPO startup script that calls the netsh command. I recently did
this to reconfigure 450 workstations to use DHCP instead of fixed IP/DNS
settings and it worked fine. The script I used is pasted below.


REM Start Script

if not exist c:\dhcp.txt goto end

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp > c:\dhcp.txt
netsh interface ip set DNS "Local Area Connection" dhcp
netsh interface ip set WINS "Local Area Connection" dhcp

:end

REM End script


If you are attempting to assign static DNS server settings use a syntax
similar to this:
netsh interface ip set dns "Local Area Connection"static 192.168.1.10

Andy