DNS on Windows Server 2003, 3rd Edition

Active Directory

We should point out that there’s another way to install the DNS server and it has to do with Active Directory. You can promote a server to be a domain controller by running Manage Your Server and selecting the Domain Controller role. Active Directory requires that certain information about Active Directory domains be present in DNS. When you create the first domain controller for an Active Directory domain, the domain controller installation process tries to add this necessary information to the appropriate DNS zone. If this process fails, the Installation Wizard offers to install the DNS Server on the domain controller and create the appropriate zones so the critical information related to Active Directory can be added and will be present in DNS.

If your organization already has a domain controller or two set up, it’s possible that those domain controllers are running the DNS server and that some zones have already been created. If that’s the case, you won’t need to follow all the steps in the rest of the chapter: you won’t need to create your zones, but you’ll still need to add information about your hosts to DNS. Just be aware that as you take a look at what’s in your zones, you might find that extra information related to Active Directory.

We’re going to talk a lot more about Active Directory and how it uses DNS in Chapter 8, but it’s not too early to highlight the close relationship between Active Directory and DNS.