DNS Logs are they working?
I have two domain controllers in my enviroment, both servers are DHCP & DNS servers and everything appears to be talking just fine. Howeverwhen I look at the logs the DNS event log does not seem to have much in it. The only alerts are the starting of the server. As of now both DNS servers have been up for awhile, the last event in one DNS is dated 12/4/08 and my other is 12/11/08. Is this normal?Both servers are on the same domain one assigns DHCP from 10.10.1.20 to 10.10.1.149 where the other DHCP server gives out 10.10.1.150 to 10.10.1.230. DNS servers are 10.10.1.2 and 10.10.1.3.Just on a side note when configuring two DNS servers to work together should one be considered the "master" and the other "secondary"? What I mean is via the DHCP should the server that assigned the DHCP point to itself first and then the second DNS server to be secondary? Or should I just assign on server to be the primary regardless of which server assigns the DHCP?Some of my workstations will have the DNS order of 10.10.1.3 followed by 10.10.1.2, where other workstations would have 10.10.1.2 followed by 10.10.1.3. Is this ideal or shouldbe consistant across the board regardless of which server hands out the IP address.On a second note, if my DHCP gives out an DNS server two internal IP address and two external should I not use the forward featuring in the DNS setting or don't add the external to the DHCP assignment? Which method offers better preformance?
January 6th, 2009 11:48pm

hi Phil,I dont see any problem with your setup.regarding dns logs , its entirely based on dns server , if any specific operation is being carried out on the dns server which creates an event , then it should be registered on dns server.in dns.exe i will be specifically writing the code / event for specific actions, so when that action is performed , dns server will lot the event. In order to test if your dns server log is getting updated or not , try restarting dns server ( when production is in outage ).regarding the primary and secondary dns server entries, should not matter, because client perform a recursive query to the dns server , if the dns server is capable to resolve the FQDN name then the dns server will return the appropriate result, if not the dns server will send an iterative query to other dns server.the above process goes on until it reaches root servers. secondary dns servers will be useful if the primary dns server failed to answer the client query .so toggle between Working primary and secondary dns server doesnt have much difference.sainath Windows Driver Development
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January 7th, 2009 8:40am

Hi,Regarding the DNS logs, its also depends on your DNS Event Logging settings. Open DNS console, right-click DNS server, choose Properties, switch to Event Logging tab, is All events options selected? If not, Event Log will not have many entries.As Sainath explained, "master" and "secondary" DNS Server is depending on your network infrastructure and plan. The assignment of DNS and DHCP doesnt matter if all your clients and workstations are in the same LAN. Generally speaking, DNS doesnt affect performance in LAN. Thanks.
January 8th, 2009 5:31am

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