Matt's questions

We need to setup DNS for a relatively large number of domain names (50-60), most of which will have an identical zone setup (except for the stuff that /has/ to change on a per-domain basis).

Is there a hosted DNS provider out there that offers features like:

1) Zone templates - i.e. create a standard set of DNS records once, and then apply that template to one or more domain names, automatically inserting / changing bits that are domain-specific.

2) Mass-updating - i.e. say we need to change the "root" A record on 50 domains from "domain.name = 1.2.3.4" to "domain.name = "4.3.2.1", a feature which lets us apply this across all 50 domains in one go rather than updating each domain individually.

Are these sorts of features available? If so, can anyone recommend a reliable hosted DNS service that offers them?

Thanks.

In equipment which has dual power supplies - e.g. a server - how is power draw balanced between them?

Will they be "active/active", with load evenly spread between both PSUs? Or will they be "active/passive", with one PSU supplying most (all?) power required by the server, and the other drawing no power (or close to no power) but standing by ready to take over if required? Or something else?

For example:

We have a server with dual power supplies. Each power supply is on and connected to mains power. The server currently requires 400 watts of power.

Will 400W be supplied by PSU #1 (and the mains connection it uses), and 0W supplied by PSU #2?

-or-

Will 200W be supplied by PSU #1, and 200W supplied by PSU #2?

-or-

Something else?

Looking for some help with a problem that has me at my wit's end - I've troubleshot this for days and cannot figure it out.

All of a sudden, a few days ago, copying files from some of our Windows XP SP3 x86 workstations to one particular Windows 2008 R1 x64 server has become super-slow - think 7 minutes to transfer a 10MB file. The problem is only workstation -> server, copying in the other direction is working normally.

Copying files to this same server (and same file share) has been fine for months previously, and as far as I know nothing has been changed on the server, workstations, Group Policy, etc. The workstations are physical machines, the server is a VM running in ESX 3.5, everything is connected by gigabit LAN and all are joined to the same (Windows 2008 funtioncal level) domain.

There is nothing obviously wrong on either the workstations or the server - no CPU/memory/disk issues or spikes, no event log entries, no apparent DNS or Active Directory issues, etc. Also, apart from this specific problem, the workstations and the server are behaving entirely normally (including network copy to other servers / shares).

Through some trouble-shooting I've established that problem is only occurring on some of our workstations - specifically, three machines that are used by our IT department. This does mean slightly different Group Policy and application set, but as I mentioned above, nothing should have changed around when the problem started, and none of these machines have anything unusual installed on them that should affect the network or file sharing.

Another unusual aspect to this problem is that it's occurred once before - involving exactly the same workstations and a different server, but in both cases the problem servers are almost identical - Windows 2008 x64 VM, running IIS7 as their /only/ app, being used as our development web server. Last time round we just nuked the server (and replaced it with the one that has the issue this time) which fixed the problem until now, but given the problem has repeated itself I want to get to the root of it.

Here's what I've tried so far, all to no avail:

• Rebooted :-)
• Disabled anti-virus and firewall.
• Turned off every service possible on the server.
• Re-installed VMware Tools on the server.
• Updated network drivers on the workstations.
• Used different user accounts - it's machine specific, not user specific.
• Created new shared folders / shares on the server.
• Used several different copying methods - Explorer, TeraCopy and xcopy.
• Mapped the share using IP, NetBIOS name and FQDN.
• Flushed DNS and ARP caches.
• Forced DNS re-registration.
• Fiddled with Network Card properties (link speed, Flow Control, TOE & TSO options, MTU, etc).
• Uninstalled IIS7 on the server (thinking this was the common denominator between the two servers we've had issues with).
• Probably some other stuff I've forgotten by now...

I also tried capturing a network trace with WireShark. I don't know much about analysing these, but I did compare the trace of a "normal" copy to the trace of a "super-slow" copy, and the main difference seems to be lots of fairly long pauses (typically ~0.3 seconds) before a series of error entries beginning with things like "[TCP Retransmission]", "[TCP Dup ACK...", "[TCP Fast Retransmission]" and "[TCP Out-Of-Order]". Not sure if that's any help.

So - anyone have any bright ideas? I'm at a loss as to what could be wrong or how to fix it :-S

We've recently migrated our Windows network to use DFS for shared files. DFS is working well, except for one annoying problem: users experience a significant delay when they try to access a DFS namespace that they have not accessed for some time. I have tried to troubleshoot the issue but have not had any success so far, and I was hoping someone here may have some pointers to help resolve the problem.

Firstly, some background on our network:

The network uses a Windows 2008 functional level Active Directory domain with two Windows 2008 DCs and two DNS servers (one on each of the DCs). The network is DNS only - no WINS. All computers are located at the same site and connected by Gigabit Ethernet. We have approximately 20 Domain-based DFS namespaces in Windows 2008 mode, and each DFS namespace has two Windows 2008 DFS namespace servers (the same two servers for all namespaces). All namespace servers are in FQDN mode and all folder targets are specified using their FQDN. All computers are up-to-date with Service Packs and patches.

The actual folder targets (i.e. the SMB shares our DFS folders point to) are scattered across several file and application servers, all running Windows 2008 bar two application servers which run Windows 2003 R2, with no replication setup at all (e.g. all DFS folders currently only have one folder target).

Some more detail on the problem:

The namespace access delay is generally 1 - 10 seconds long and seems to occur when a particular computer has not accessed the requested namespace for approximately five minutes or more.

For example, if the user has not accessed \\domain.name\namespace1\ for more than five minutes and attempts to access \\domain.name\namespace1\ via Windows Explorer, the Explorer window will freeze for 1 - 10 seconds before finally resuming and displaying the folders that exist in \\domain.name\namespace1. If they then close the Explorer window and attempt to access \\domain.name\namespace1\ again within five minutes the contents will be displayed almost instantly - if they wait longer than five minutes it will go through the 1 - 10 second pause again.

Once "inside" the namespace everything is nice and snappy, it's just the initial connection to the namespace that is slow.

The browsing delays seem to affect all variants of Windows that we use (Windows 2008 x64 SP2, Windows 2003 R2 x86 SP2, Windows XP Pro x86 SP3) - it is possibly a bit worse in Windows XP / 2003 than in Windows 2008, but I'm not sure if the difference isn't just psychological.

Accessing the underlying folder targets directly exhibits no delay at all - i.e. if the SMB shares pointed to by DFS are accessed directly (bypassing DFS) then there is no pause.

During trouble-shooting I noticed that the "Cache duration" for all of our DFS roots is set to 300 seconds - 5 minutes. Given that this is the same amount of time required to trigger the pause I assume that this caching is somehow related, although I am unsure exactly what is cached on the client and hence what needs to be looked up again after 5 minutes have elapsed.

In trying to resolve the problem I have already tried / checked the following (without success):

• Run dcdiag on both Domain Controllers - no problems found
• Done some basic DNS server checks without finding any problems - I don't know how to check the DNS servers in detail, but I would add that the network is not exhibiting any other strange behavior that may point to a DNS problem
• Disabled Anti-virus on clients and servers
• Removing one of the namespace servers from a couple of namespaces - no difference

So that's where I'm up to - and I'm out of ideas. Can anyone suggest what may be causing the delays and/or what I should be trying next?