primary zone question

[Chris T.]

Can you have the domain zone be checked a primary zone on all domain
controllers? Or are you better off making all other domain controllers
secondary zones?

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht [MVP]]

In

Can you have the domain zone be checked a primary zone on all domain
controllers? Or are you better off making all other domain controllers
secondary zones?

Clarify your question, you are better off using Active Directory zones on
all domain controllers.
BUT.
If you have Windows 2000 you can't use an AD integrated zone from a DC in a
different domain, Win2k zones don't replicate across domain partitions, they
only replicate to DCs in their own domain.

 

[Chris T.]

I have 7 domain controllers 6 are set up as secondary masters for zones-xzy
and 1 is setup as the primary master for zone-xyz. My question is can I set
each domain controller as the primary master for zone-xyz instead of
secondary. These are all windows 2003 DC servers.

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht [MVP]]

In

I have 7 domain controllers 6 are set up as secondary masters for
zones-xzy and 1 is setup as the primary master for zone-xyz. My
question is can I set each domain controller as the primary master
for zone-xyz instead of secondary. These are all windows 2003 DC
servers.

What do you mean "Secondary Masters" there really is no such thing as a
Secondary master. A Primary is a writable zone, a master is the name server
listed on the SOA record as the DNS server that holds the master copy.
If they are secondary, Meaning that they are read only copies of the
primary, then I would delete all the secondary zones and change the Primary
to be stored in Active Directory, then set the zone replication to all DNS
servers in the forest. This setting is on the General Tab of the Primary AD
zone.
The reason you should delete the secondary zones is that once the primary is
changed to be stored in Active Directory and it can replicate through Active
Directory, if you change the secondary to AD it can cause an error because
the zone is already in Active Directory.

The only thing I would do to speed up the process is to add NS records to
the primary, if they don't already exist, for all DCs that will have the
zone.