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We are about to set up SBS 2011 at my small company < 10 users. My collaborator wants to name the SBS domain "example.local" . I'm of the opinion we should name the SBS domain "corp.example.com" and setup DNS so the "corp" record is a NS record to the SBS server's private IP.

FYI: "Example.com" isn't the real domain name and while the website is hosted outside our office, email will be stored on the SBS server in our office after passing though a spam filtering smart host hosted elsewhere too.

sandymac
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  • You want to name the domain corp.example.com and the server would be corp.corp.example.com? – joeqwerty Feb 10 '11 at 11:30
  • @joeqwerty Presumable the server's hostname would be server.corp.example.com or server.example.local . – sandymac Feb 10 '11 at 13:25
  • So, SBS 2011 Standard doesn't really give you a choice. During a new install you are only allowed to type a word with no periods, eg "example" and it will automatically append the ".local" to the domain name during the install. – sandymac Feb 12 '11 at 04:45

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We use the corp.example.com convention for our small domains. Don't use the .local tld for your domain as it is the tld for Zeroconf/Bonjour, thus any MacOS X clients would not be able connect easily. Also, using a real domain that is registered to you will make life easier for you and your users, especially when they are outside of your office.

tegbains
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I'd recommend using example.corp. Typically administrators setup their internal domain name the same as their public domain name and simple things like getting to example.com can be problematic when it is also the internal domain. In a small business perhaps that may also be preferred if it is also hosting the companies website/etc.

With using example.corp you have internal resolution and you can easily setup the records for example.com for resolution as needed and can give you added flexibility between internal and external resolution.

pablo
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Personally, I'd go with example.local, which according to Wikipedia is Microsoft's recommended naming convention.

I can't find any info to back this up, however Microsoft do have an article regarding naming a domain, which should be useful to you.

I've done many installs using this naming convention, and it give you the flexibility to be be able to assign internal and external DNS names to any system on the network as required. (e.g. test.example.local would point to the internal IP address, and test.example.com would point to its external IP address - assuming it is accessible to the outside world of course).

Note that you might find if you try to use test.example.com internally it won't work by default, but you can add another internal DNS zone (test.example.com) with a default record that points to the IP used by test.example.local, this way, test.example.com works internally and externally.

I also maintain systems for a customer that shares a .com internally and externally, and I'm constantly struggling with the duplicate DNS namespaces.

Edit: also note that .local is not a valid TLD according to RFC2606

Bryan
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    Microsoft no longer recommend using .local. Their recommendation is very vague as I have seen it these days, but some of their articles still reference it. – pablo Feb 10 '11 at 12:33
  • That probably explains why I struggled to find evidence to back this up, but regardless, from my experience, I would always recommend avoiding duplicating a DNS namespace at all costs. – Bryan Feb 10 '11 at 12:41
  • I too have tripped up on differing but duplicated DNS for internet/public DNS lookups which is why "example.com" is not considered for the new SBS install. – sandymac Feb 10 '11 at 13:33
  • Accepted because SBS 2011 standard forces the "example.local" choice as best as I can tell. – sandymac Feb 12 '11 at 04:47
  • really? That's interesting. I wonder what would happen if an older version of SBS with a domain name of example.com domain was upgraded to SBS 2011? – Bryan Feb 12 '11 at 09:12
  • An upgrade would keep the example.com domain name. As a matter of fact, you can actually choose another TLD, instead of .local, if you use an answer-file when installing SBS 2011. See http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2011/01/21/introducing-the-sbs-2011-answer-file-generator.aspx I'm using .lcl to avoid conflicts with OS X's Bonjour. – Martijn Heemels Nov 09 '11 at 19:17