Chapter 15. Managing DNS
DNS (Domain Name System) can be thought of as the telephone book for your network. When you need to communicate with a remote machine, you usually do so by typing the machine name into the client software or command. DNS is then interrogated by your system to discover the IP address of the remote system. Once that address has been obtained, your system can initiate communication through automatic and standard networking techniques.
DNS extends beyond your organization, because it’s normal for your DNS servers to be configured to communicate with DNS on the internet and hand off the resolution of queries they can’t handle.
Note
This chapter assumes that you’re familiar with the concept of DNS and understand how it works in your environment.
The chapter starts with an overview showing how DNS works with Active Directory and explaining what’s required for a non-Microsoft DNS to work with Active Directory. Next, we’ll look at a DNS server configuration and see how to work with DNS zones and records. From there, we’ll move on to testing whether your systems are working correctly with DNS, and we’ll conclude with a lab.
First, though, how does DNS work with Active Directory?