Install and Configure Windows 2000 DNS Server
Part 2 - Primary Name Server for a Zone

Written by Tony Bhimani
September 8, 2004

Requirements
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

Now we will configure a Primary Name Server for our zone. We will use the infamous domain somefakedomain.com that we used in the RedHat DNS tutorial. Start by going to Start, Settings, Control Panel. Open Administrative Tools and double-click on the DNS icon.

The DNS Manager will open. Expand the tree by clicking the plus (+) signs next to the server and Forward Lookup Zones. Right-click on Forward Lookup Zones and select New Zone.

The New Zone Wizard dialog box will open. Click Next.

For creating a Primary Name Server you will want to select the second option Standard Primary. Click Next.

Now we will enter the domain name for our zone. In this example we enter somefakedomain.com, but if you have an existing domain name then enter yours here. Click Next.

Since this is a new zone we will be creating a new data file. The wizard provides a default file name, but you can change this to anything you want. Make a note that your zone files will be stored in %SystemRoot%\system32\dns where %SystemRoot% is typically C:\Winnt on Windows 2000 (unless you installed Windows in a different directory name). You should consider making backups of your zone files in the event of a system crash. Click Next.

The zone file has now been created. The wizard will show you a success dialog box. Click Finish.

You should now have two records for your zone. The Start of Authority (SOA) and the default Name Server. We will be changing these a little bit later.

Now we will create some hosts. We want to handle requests for our domain name (i.e. somefakedomain.com), www.somefakedomain.com, and add a Mail Exchange (MX) and host mail.somefakedomain.com. We will also add another host called ns1.somefakedomain.com for our name server which will only serve for our domain registrar. Right-click on the somefakedomain.com folder and select New Host.

We start by adding our name server host (ns1). For the tutorial we use the IP address 192.168.1.90, but you substitute this for the Internet IP address of your Primary Name Server. We will assume our Web Server runs on the same machine as our DNS and will therefore have the same IP address. Our mail server on the other hand runs on a different machine with the IP address 192.168.1.91. I suggest you take a moment and write down what each of your systems will do and their corresponding IP addresses. Such as Machine A will do Web, DNS, and FTP. Machine B will do Mail and Backup DNS. Machine A is 192.168.1.x and Machine B is 192.168.1.y.

Add a new host for each of these items. For the second item, you don't enter a host name, just leave it blank. That allows somefakedomain.com to resolve without a host name.

Host        IP Address
-----------------------------
ns1         192.168.1.90
            192.168.1.90
www         192.168.1.90
mail        192.168.1.91

When you have finished you should have several hosts listed. Now we will change our SOA and Name Server records.

Right-click on the SOA record and select Properties.

On the Start of Authority tab we will want to change the Primary Server and Responsible Person fields. For Primary Server you can type in the name of the Name Server or use the browse button to select the record. The Responsible Person field is where you put the email address of the person responsible for the DNS Server. In this example I use admin@somefakedomain.com, but you will want to put your email address. Notice how you place a period instead of an @ for the email address. This is the format for zone files. Be sure not to forget the trailing period after the email address. Feel free to change the timing fields for Refresh, Retry, Expires, and TTL (Time to Live) if you require different values.

Now click on the Name Servers tab. Right now there is a default name server listed (yours may be empty). Remove the name server by highlighting it and clicking the Remove button. We will now add the one we created. Click on the Add button.

You can either type in the server name and IP address or click the Browse button and navigate to the ns1 record. I suggest using the Browse button because it eliminates typing errors. After you have loaded the ns1 record, click the OK button.

Back on the Name Servers tab our ns1 name server should now be listed with its IP address. Next click on the Zone Transfers tab.

We only want to allow transfers to our Secondary Name Server and no others. Select the second option. Later when we add our Backup DNS Server, this feature tells the Primary DNS Server it is ok to send a copy to our Secondary Server. Click on the OK button.

Next we will add our Mail Exchange (MX) record. Right-click on the somefakedomain.com folder and select New Mail Exchanger.

Either type in the mail host mail.somefakedomain.com or click on the Browse button and navigate to the mail record and select it. For the Mail Server Priority, you can leave the default value of 10. But if you will have several mail servers, the lower the number, the higher the priority. When mail is sent to your domain, the sending mail server will try all your servers one by one until one accepts the message. It will start with the server with the highest priority and work its way down. After you have entered the mail server and set the priority, click OK.

All our records and settings have now been entered. The only thing left to do is update the server data file and reload the zone so our changes take effect. Right-click on the somefakedomain.com folder and select Update Server Data File.

After the file has been updated, right-click somefakedomain.com again, but this time select Reload.

A message will appear asking you if you are sure you want to reload the zone. Select the OK button. Now if you get some error about the zone file being locked, wait a few minutes and try to reload the zone again. If the error persists, go to Administrative Tools in Control Panel and open up Services. Locate Domain Name Service (DNS) and stop the service, then restart it. Go back and try to reload the zone. It should work now.

Now that our zone has been reloaded it is time to test the DNS Server to see if it responds to our queries. We will be using the nslookup utility and you can perform these steps either on the DNS Server itself or on another machine like I did. Go to Start and click Run. In the Run box, type cmd and press enter. You should get a command prompt. Type in the following commands.

nslookup
server 192.168.1.90
somefakedomain.com
www.somefakedomain.com
mail.somefakedomain.com
exit

If all goes well the DNS Server should report back the IP addresses of the hosts we entered.

Congratulations! You just configured a Primary Name Server. Now if you want to configure a Secondary Name Server, continue to part 3 of this tutorial.

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