Hello, We are currently migrating from Netware to AD and are running into issues with DNS. We currently have a non MSU DNS server as our institution's main DNS and the hostmaster does not allow DDNS. What we have done is created a delegation of authority to make our AD DNS authoritative to our subdomain ad.host.com. This worked at first until we started joining workstations. All devices are assigned IP's and DNS servers from our Campus DNS server not AD DNS. When we join the machines the DOA passes the information to AD and creates a forward record, but not a PTR record. only if we manually assign AD DNS as the primary DNS will the PTR record be updated. Since both our main DNS and AD share the class B subnet and I do not believe we can do reverse forwarding in this case what are my options?

Hello We had a similar situation netware dns and MS active directory integrated dns. To resolve it we added both the ad.host.com and the _msdcs.ad.host.com as zones to the netware dns. On the MS Primary DNS server, go to properties, advanced tab and make sure the "Bind Secondaries" is checked and on the netware dns, allow it to receive record updates for ad.host.com and the _msdcs.ad.host.com from the MS DNS box. Also create a conditional forwarders for your host.com on your MS AD DNS box. I am assuming that you are in a windows 2008 environment. Once this is complete, there will be no need to manually enter Pri dns to workstation when joining to the domain and no matter what dns server a workstation is pointing to, it should be able to communicate to either the AD or the netware Let me know how this work out Isaac Oben MCITP:EA, MCSE

Issac, Thank you for the response. We are not using Netware DNS but an independent UNIX DNS server. I am assuming that the procedure would be the same to copy the zones to the UNIX DNS server and create conditional forwarders. Yes the new environment will be 2008. This is the first time we will be binding workstations to a directory. Charlie

It just occurred to me isn't it possible to set up both a secondary forward and reverse DNS zones from my main DNS on my AD DNS servers? Wouldn't then I be able to point my members to AD DNS and they would get both the AD and institution DNS information for forward and reverse?

Yes, the procedures shoudl be the sameIsaac Oben MCITP:EA, MCSE