I have to setup a small windows network inside my bigger linux/mac infrastructure. In order to get the windows clients logging onto the domain, I have had to make the DC their primary DNS server, which seems to have worked.
I would much prefer to have one DNS server running on my network, or at least one authoritative server running on the network.
I have a USG 200 router/firewall and I can configure some static records for DNS, but I an not sure what I need to put in order to get DNS and AD working together, and hints and tips appreciated.
The first thing you should know is that Active Directory and DNS are so intertwined that they're almost one. For all intents and purposes, you should forget the idea of having an Active Directory domain which doesn't have a primary DNS server for Windows clients.
I won't say it's "impossible", but I will strongly advise you that it's a path with only pain.
As an alternative, why not let AD and DNS do their thing together and then add forwarders to your normal DNS servers. It's the same end result, you can basically forget about your Microsoft DNS server as it will just plod along doing its own thing as you actively maintain and update your other Name Servers.
Just deploy AD on subdomain like windowsdomain.example.com instead of on example.com, and then delegate this subdomain to your domain controllers. This way, you will get two domains, which you could potentially split up for greater security.
You do not need to run windows DNS on a domain controller for proper functionality of AD. DNS is the backbone of AD so you want to have a very resilient very reliable DNS infrastructure prior to adding active directory. I would strongly recommend using either windows OR your existing DNS infrastructure but I would not use both. Bind 9 will work fine. You should verify that the namespace you are using is valid for active directory.