DNS on Windows Server 2003, 3rd Edition

Active Directory Integration

We discuss Active Directory in Chapter 8. Briefly, this feature eliminates the load on the primary master from secondaries’ polling by eliminating the secondaries! Remember that the main purpose of the primary master/secondary relationship is zone data replication: the DNS designers created the zone transfer mechanism as a way to spread zone data among multiple authoritative name servers. Windows stores all kinds of information about the network in Active Directory and replicates this information, too. With Windows Server 2003, you have the option of storing the definitive version of your zones’ data in Active Directory rather than in zone datafiles on the primary master. All name servers running on domain controllers load the zone data stored in Active Directory, which also takes care of replicating changes to the data. See Chapter 8 for more details and instructions on setting up Active Directory.