Install and Configure Windows 2000 DNS Server
Part 3 - Secondary Name Server for a Zone

Written by Tony Bhimani
September 8, 2004

Requirements
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

Now we will configure the Secondary Name Server for our zone. If you haven't done so already, install the DNS Server on the backup server. If you forgot how then check part 1 of the tutorial. After the DNS Server is installed, go to Start, Settings, and Control Panel. Open Administrative Tools and double-click on the DNS icon. The DNS Manager for the Secondary Name Server will open up. Expand the tree by clicking the plus (+) signs and then right-click on Forward Lookup Zones and select New Zone.

The New Zone Wizard dialog box should open. This time we will be selecting the Standard Secondary option since we are creating a Secondary Name Server. Click Next.

Type in the domain name somefakedomain.com (or type in your domain name if you are setting up an existing one) and then click Next.

Now the wizard will ask us for the IP address of the Primary Name Server which it will pull the zone information from. Type in the IP address of your Primary Name Server and then click Add. It should be placed in the bottom listbox. Click Next.

The zone has now been created. Click Finish.

You may be presented with an error like the following. If you remember back when we set up our primary server, we edited the SOA record. On the Zone Transfers tab we told it to only send a copy of our zone to the name servers listed on the Name Servers tab. At that time we only had one server which was the Primary Name Server. Now we will add our Secondary Name Server to the SOA on the Primary Name Server.

Go back to your Primary Name Server and open up the DNS Manager. We will add a new host called ns2 (i.e. name server 2) and add it to our Name Servers list in our SOA. Right-click on the somefakedomain.com folder and select New Host.

I set up my Secondary Name Server on a machine with the IP of 192.168.1.99 (yours will be different). When the New Host dialog box appears, add the host ns2 and put in the IP address of your Secondary Name Server. Click OK.

Next we will edit our SOA record to add the Secondary Name Server to the Name Servers list. Right-click on the SOA record and select Properties.

Go to the Name Servers tab and click on the Add button.

Type in the server name, IP address, and click on the Add button. Or use the Browse button to select the ns2 host record (which is what I suggest). Click OK.

Both the Primary and Secondary Name Servers should now be listed on the Name Servers tab. The Primary Name Server now knows that our Secondary Server should receive a copy of the zone file. Click OK.

Go back to your Secondary Name Server and right-click the somefakedomain.com folder and select Transfer From Master. This tells the Secondary Server to pull a copy of our zone information.

The DNS Manager should now show a copy of all the Hosts, SOA, Name Servers, and Mail Exchange for our zone. That's it! You just created a Backup DNS Server.

The last thing we should do is query our Secondary Name Server and make sure it responds. On the server or any other machine, open a command prompt and run the nslookup utility. Got to Start and click Run. Type in cmd and press enter. Type in the following commands.

nslookup
server 192.168.1.99
somefakedomain.com
www.somefakedomain.com
mail.somefakedomain.com
exit

If everything works then you should see the Secondary Name Server respond with the IP addresses of the hosts we entered. You might also wanna do a lookup on ns1.somefakedomain.com and ns2.somefakedomain.com just for fun.

That concludes the tutorial. Now you can go set up as many DNS Servers as you want. Have fun!

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