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stwissel
Asked: 2016-03-01 08:37:22 +0800 CST

Can Windows 2008 DNS assign 2 host names to one IP address

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One of my windows admins claimed: "Windows 2008 DNS server can't assign 2 names to one IP address". Besides the fact that you could use a CNAME to accomplish that, I'm sure (having worked with all sorts of other DNS servers) that it should be possible to add multiple A (or AAAA) pointing the the same IP address. Can someone confirm/clarify that for me? Thx

windows-server-2008

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Here is a partly-redacted screen capture of two A records on one of our Windows Server 2008 DNS servers:

    2008 DNS records

    As you can see, there are two different names in two different A records with the same IP address in both records. I just created this image in the last ten minutes. There are several other examples all over our Windows DNS servers of this.

    The admin who claimed otherwise was either completely wrong or spoke in a confusing way that made it seem like they said something completely wrong.

    Note that the converse is also possible. It is possible to have two or more A records with the same name but different IP addresses. Not only is this possible, it's essential for proper functioning of a Windows 2000 or later domain.

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  2. I don't know what you mean by "assign". A Windows DNS server doesn't "assign" DNS names.

    Do you mean will it allow two different hosts to register an A record for the same ip address? If so, the answer is yes. This happens quite often with DHCP assigned ip addresses when DNS scavenging isn't enabled. You wind up with A records for multiple computers (names) for the same ip address.

    You can also manually create:

    1. Multiple A records with the same name for different ip addresses.

    AND

    1. Multiple A records with different names for the same ip address.
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  3. It is certainly possible to have any number of A or AAAA records all with the same IP address. There are, for example, many thousands of records with 127.0.0.1.

    The Windows 2008 DNS server may of course implement any restriction it feels like.

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