DNS on Windows Server 2003, 3rd Edition

Quick Overview

The three main areas of interest when it comes to managing DNS include server configuration, zone management, and the creation and deletion of resource records. The DNS Provider has several classes to manipulate each of these components, all stored under the root\MicrosoftDNS namespace. With the MicrosoftDNS_Server class, you can manipulate server configuration settings, start and stop the DNS Server service, and initiate scavenging. The MicrosoftDNS_Zone class allows you to create, delete, and modify zone configurations. The MicrosoftDNS_ResourceRecord class and child classes provide methods for manipulating the various resource record types. Each of these is explained in more detail in the next few sections.

Several additional classes supported by the DNS Provider manage other aspects of DNS including the root hints (MicrosoftDNS_RootHints), DNS server cache (MicrosoftDNS_Cache), and server statistics (MicrosoftDNS_Statistics) classes. For more information on these classes, including sample scripts in VBScript and Perl, search for “DNS WMI Provider” in the Microsoft Developer Network Library ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/).