Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of KPI1
KPI1

asked on

DNS Scavenging - Stale records not deleted from forward lookup zone

Hello,

I am trying to implement DNS scavenging in my Active Directory integrated DNS environment, but I have a weird situation occurring.  All stale PTR records are being scavenged properly from the reverse lookup zones, but the stale A records in my primary forward lookup zone stubbornly remain.  My environment contains 3 DNS servers- 2 Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition SP2 DC's and a single Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 DC.

Here is what I have done so far:

1.  Enabled aging/scavenging on all of the zones I wish to scavenge on the DNS servers
2.  I watched over the next several weeks to see how the timestamps were replicated around the DC's and made sure that all of my critical systems were updating as expected so that they would not be accidentally deleted.
3.  The zones in question were eligible to be scavenged several weeks ago according to DNS
4.  I proceeded to enable scavenging on the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 DC/DNS server and set it to scanvenge the stale resource at the default interval of 7 days
5.  In order to make an immediate scavenging pass, I manually initiated a scavenging operation on the DC mentioned in step 4 above.
6.  The results were that all of the stale records in the multiple reverse zones were immediately scavenged as expected.  However, all of the stale resource records in the forward lookup zone remain and will not be removed no matter where I run the manual scavenge from.
7. I checked the security tab on the records in both types of zones and everything is identical

My question here is - what am I missing? I followed this article as exactly as possible, but perhaps I have overlooked some nuance:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/networking/archive/2008/03/19/don-t-be-afraid-of-dns-scavenging-just-be-patient.aspx

All of the stale A records are set to be scavenged when they become stale (checkbox on the record itself) and all of them are very VERY old 7/1/2009 for example.  Scavenging is enabled in all three places - the DNS server, the zone in question, and the individual A record.

Perhaps my best bet is just to manually delete all of the old A records from the forward lookup zone and then watch the behavior with all newly created dynamic A records moving forward?  Could it be something with the mix of 2003 and 2008 R2 DNS servers?

Any ideas? Please don't ask if I have enabled scavenging on the DNS server as well as the individual zones.  That is the canned answer that appears over and over on technet and google as a response to this problem.  I came to Experts Exchange with this issue for a reason! ;-)

Thanks in advance,

Jon
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Mahesh
Mahesh
Flag of India image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of KPI1
KPI1

ASKER

Thanks Mahesh,

Yes I have it configured to scavenge on only a single server.  I will try the /zoneresetscavengerservers command and see if that fixes it, but I don't see any settings in /zoneinfo for the domain to indicate that an old server is configured for scavenging like the KB article referenced in you post mentions.

If that doesn't work, I will manually delete the old records since my zone is only a couple of hundred A records.  Then I will see if the problem persists.

Thank you for your assistance,

Jon