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joeqwerty
Asked: 2012-04-27 16:07:28 +0800 CST

Windows Server 2008 DNS Server and Root Hints Location

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In looking at the AD partitions using ADSIEdit I see that both the Domain partition and the DomainDnsZones partitions have a DC=RootDNSServers container which both contain objects of dnsNode class representing the Root Hint servers. I have two questions about this:

  1. Why are the Root Hints being stored in AD? I always understood that they were loaded from the "C:\Windows\System32\dns\cache.dns" file.

  2. Why are they stored in both the Domain and the DomainDnsZones partitions?

domain-name-system active-directory

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    They can be loaded from the cache.dns server, but they also can be loaded from active directory.

    If your DNS server is also a DC, it will automatically load root hints from AD first. If it is not a DC, it will use the cache.dns file.

    Any customization of the Root Hints are stored at: 

    DC=RootDNSServers,CN=MicrosoftDNS,DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=<company>,DC=<tld>

    As Shane mentioned, I believe the copy in the Domain partition is used for backwards compatibility.

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