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Thomas NFlag for United States of America

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Active directory DNS integrated question?

In a AD DNS integrated network. I just want to be clear on something. We have about 8 DNS servers in our environment.We set the primary and secondary using DHCP but if those are not available it eventually moves to the next available DNS server? I have seen it though where one of our DNS servers go down and the machines cant resolve names. Im assuming because there is a timeout issue.
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Chris Dent
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If you only set 2 using DHCP then your network clients will have no way of discovering more DNS servers to use.

Even if you did set more, 8 is monstrous overkill. I wouldn't push more than 4 really, and even that might be a bit heavy-weight.
I would have to agree that 8 DNS servers is overkill UNLESS they are in physically different locations/Sites. How is your network configured in terms of locations?
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ASKER

We have 8 sites in different cities.
We only have 1 dns server per site but I do see in the logs some DNS servers are getting requests from other sites eventhough they are not listed as primary or secondary.
that's makes a little more sense :)!  Obviously you would want each workstation to connect to a DNS server that is local first. I am making an assumption that these DNS servers are on your DCs? If so, I am also assuming you have local redundancy by having 2 DCs per site?

So with my assumptions, if 2 of local DCs that are DNS servers go down, then I would assume you have much larger problems than what DNS server the client will fail to. I would suggest having at least 3 with top 2 being the local and 3rd DNS being one in a connected AD Site.

Hope that helps.
So I guess my question is. If I only have 2 listed then really there should be no way a machine should be looking at the other DNS servers? As Chris Dent was stating? Even if they are in the same domain, etc. No way possible?
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Ibrahim Benna
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