DNS cname issue

Hello,

Can you give us more details about it?

There is not something like DNS records (i.e. names) at the root level. Windows DNSs can include 'GlobalZones' that allows you to resolve flat names using aliases, if you want to use this feature you need to activate it. And a second way of resolving flat names is redirecting the DNS requests from a server to a WINS server.

Give us more details please.

On our old Server 2008 Std. in the DNS Manager, located under the Forward Lookup Zone, our record for "abc.edu" is listed:

line 1 - (same as parent folder)   -    SOA                    -    machine name
line 2 - (same as parent folder)   -    NS                       -    machine name
line 3 - (same as parent folder)   -    Alias (CNAME)   -    " abc.com "
line 4 - ftp                                        -   Host (A)               -   IP Address
line 5 - mx1                                     -   Host  (A)              -   IP Address
line 6 - mx1                                     -   (MX)                     -    mx1.abc.edu
line 7 - securemail                         -  Host (A)                -  IP Address
line 8 - www                                    -  Host (A)                -  IP Address

The problem comes when we upgraded to Server 2008 R2. Line 3 above is missing. When we try to add the CNAME "abc.com" we get the error below:

"A new Record cannot be created. An alias (CNAME) record cannot be added to this DNS name. The DNS name contains records that are incompatible with the CNAME record"

Now Obviously I have adjusted specific account information for security details.

I wouldn't call that deprecated as much as i'd say they adhered to specs (oddly, I thought 2003 and 2008 did as well, but it has been near a decade since I worked with those OSes and longer since I tried to break spec.)

In short, even if you could do it on old OSes, you shouldn't have been. The no CNAME at the root rule is about as old as DNS itself. RFC 1034, 1035, and 1912 all touch on it, were written in the 80s, and are certainly not a "Microsoft broke functionality" sort of situation.

Thank you Cliff for your post. I agree that we should not have been doing it this way, but like most Tech people, we are trying to fix a problem that was in place before our time on this network. We are reaching out to the community for a best way to resolve our current issue.

thanks for the info. I will try that in the morning. if this works out I will reward you all points.

great help. thank you.