Secondary Server didn't resolve DNS

[Harrison Midkiff]

Hello:

I am using 2 Windows 2003 DNS servers. One is primary and the second is
secondary. Over the weekend my primary DNS server went down. DNS
resolution was down until I got it back online? My secondary should have
been serving requests....

Anybody have any ideas?

Harrison Midkiff

 

[Frankster]

Are your clients configured for a secondary? Can you secondary resolve
requests for itself? Are these unresolved requests external? Internal?
Both? Are you AD Intergrated?

-Frank

 

[Kurt]

Well, first the obvious.

1) Clients have the secondary listed as their second DNS server?
2) Zone transfers are properly configured and occurring?
3) TTL for the secondary zone is long enough?
4) DNS service is running on the secondary?

Other than that, anything in the event logs of either server?

...kurt

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht Sr. [MVP]]

Hello:

I am using 2 Windows 2003 DNS servers. One is primary and the second
is secondary. Over the weekend my primary DNS server went down. DNS
resolution was down until I got it back online? My secondary should
have been serving requests....

Anybody have any ideas?

What was the expire time on the Start of Authority record?
If it is still at the default, one day, the secondary zone would have
expired one day after it last refreshed its data.

 

[Harrison Midkiff]

Hello:

I am not sure but I may have found the problem.

There are 4 name servers registered for my domain. 2 of the servers did not
have zones for my domain. If a request came into that server would it
basically answer "NO" and then that would be the end of the resolution? I
am not sure. I thought it would continue through the name servers until one
replied.

Harrison Midkiff

 

[Kevin D. Goodknecht Sr. [MVP]]

Hello:

I am not sure but I may have found the problem.

There are 4 name servers registered for my domain. 2 of the servers
did not have zones for my domain. If a request came into that server
would it basically answer "NO" and then that would be the end of the
resolution? I am not sure. I thought it would continue through the
name servers until one replied.

Once a DNS server answers either negatively or positively the query stops.