Windows 2003 DNS - network card settings for DNS servers

Is your DNS infrstructure configured for AD Integrated?  If so then all DNS servers should point to themselves as primary servers.  

If you have Primary & Secondary DNS servers, then on network card properties for your secondary DNS configure the primary DNS server to point to themselves and configure the secondary DNS server on the network card to point to the primary DNS server.



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Set the secondaries to point to the primary.

I see some conflicting advice. Can anything give a reference URL or whatnot that will help us get a concrete answer?

My biggest concern is that when your primary DNS goes down, won't your secondary DNS servers have major issues if they are only pointing to the primary? How will they function?

To answer the questions posed to me: We tried AD integrated but had weird probelms with zones disappearing. Eventually we heard enough people with the same problem that we decided to go to the more standard primary and secondary DNS servers. This has been working better for us.

If you use AD integrated DNS this is not an issue which is why it is the preferred option (that and better security, better integration, more efficient replication)

With AD integrated DNS you don't have the updateable primary DNS and read only secondaries, you have multiple primaries, any and all of which can be updated and will replicate the changes to the others as part of the normal AD integration.

Clients if you have multiple internall windows DNS servers then clients should point at one as the preferred DNS and another as the alternate. You should make the DNS server point to itself as preferred DNS. The thinking now seems to be that an alternate DNS on a DNS server causes more issues than it solves.

OK, thanks all for the immense help. Gotta love experts-exchange! I'll probably give integrated another chance our problem with the zones magically disappearing.