moving an ad domain to another forward lookup zone

[Jason Gallas]

When I got to this office just over a year ago the previous net admin had
the AD DNS zone setup strangely. I think it was an upgrade from an NT
domain controller to a Windows 2000 domain controller and somehow in the
upgrade process he failed to check something so the netbios domain name
actually became a sub-domain. Therefore the DNS is setup for the domain as
nbdomainnane.domain.com where every computer in our AD domain lives.

I also have a second domain called domain.com that I use for website and
email name resolution. When I created this second domain a subdomain was
automatically created inside of it with the netbiosdomain name. Below I
have both forward lookup zones with an explanation of each.

AD forward lookup zone:
netbiosdomainname.domain.com

Second forward lookup zone I added:
domain.com
netbiosdomainname (subdomain; automatically created by DNS)

I would like to move every computer from the netbiosdomainname.domain.com to
the subdomain that was created by DNS in the second zone. The ideal
situation would of course be to move everyone to the actual domain.com
forward lookup zone and just have the netbios name for the domain, but I
think this would require disjoining every pc from the domain and rebuilding
AD. Are my assumptions about this process correct? What pitfalls if any
are there to making this move?

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht [MVP]]

In Jason Gallas <[email protected]> posted a question
Then Kevin replied below:
: When I got to this office just over a year ago the previous net admin
: had the AD DNS zone setup strangely. I think it was an upgrade from
: an NT domain controller to a Windows 2000 domain controller and
: somehow in the upgrade process he failed to check something so the
: netbios domain name actually became a sub-domain. Therefore the DNS
: is setup for the domain as nbdomainnane.domain.com where every
: computer in our AD domain lives.
:
: I also have a second domain called domain.com that I use for website
: and email name resolution. When I created this second domain a
: subdomain was automatically created inside of it with the
: netbiosdomain name. Below I have both forward lookup zones with an
: explanation of each.
:
: AD forward lookup zone:
: netbiosdomainname.domain.com
:
: Second forward lookup zone I added:
: domain.com
: netbiosdomainname (subdomain; automatically created by DNS)
:
: I would like to move every computer from the
: netbiosdomainname.domain.com to the subdomain that was created by DNS
: in the second zone. The ideal situation would of course be to move
: everyone to the actual domain.com forward lookup zone and just have
: the netbios name for the domain, but I think this would require
: disjoining every pc from the domain and rebuilding AD. Are my
: assumptions about this process correct? What pitfalls if any are
: there to making this move?

Moving everyone to domain.com would require a domain rename, which is not
possible with Win2k.
What you should do is delete the subdomain in domain.com and create a
delegation named 'netbiosname' then point the delegation to the DNS name and
IP of the DNS server.
Then leave the zone named 'netbiosname.domain.com' as the name of the AD
zone.

Doing this will keep the zones separate as they should be.

 

[Danny Slye - [MSFT}]

You should be able to delete the netbiosdomainname.domain.com zone. Then
stop and start the netlogon service. Then the records will register in the
subdomain. I tested this on a break box and it worked for me. Your
mileage may vary. Make sure you are configured correctly for DNS, pointing
to yourself for dns, dynamic updates enabled, etc.
Renaming the domain to domain.com is not a good option. Essentially have
have to rebuild the domain.
--------------------

When I got to this office just over a year ago the previous net admin had
the AD DNS zone setup strangely. I think it was an upgrade from an NT
domain controller to a Windows 2000 domain controller and somehow in the
upgrade process he failed to check something so the netbios domain name
actually became a sub-domain. Therefore the DNS is setup for the domain as
nbdomainnane.domain.com where every computer in our AD domain lives.

I also have a second domain called domain.com that I use for website and
email name resolution. When I created this second domain a subdomain was
automatically created inside of it with the netbiosdomain name. Below I
have both forward lookup zones with an explanation of each.

AD forward lookup zone:
netbiosdomainname.domain.com

Second forward lookup zone I added:
domain.com
netbiosdomainname (subdomain; automatically created by DNS)

I would like to move every computer from the netbiosdomainname.domain.com to
the subdomain that was created by DNS in the second zone. The ideal
situation would of course be to move everyone to the actual domain.com
forward lookup zone and just have the netbios name for the domain, but I
think this would require disjoining every pc from the domain and rebuilding
AD. Are my assumptions about this process correct? What pitfalls if any
are there to making this move?

__
Danny Slye
Microsoft Support Professional
MCSE

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