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are windows SBS is starting to go and when it does all the clients in our office loose dns settings and then as a result can not get out to the internet for services they need

as a temporary measure I have manually edited some of there computers to have a alternate DNS server (preferred is set to the ip address of the SBS automaticly)

What setting on the SBS do i need to change to push the Alternate DNS SERVER value out to all the computers on this domain?

Crash893
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2 Answers2

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If you just use your ISP's DNS you are going to run into problems because you will have trouble resolving local resources. You probably want to add a new DNS server to your network, DNS is a very "light" service in small networks so this can be done on a small box with no problems.

  1. Install DNS on a new box
  2. On the SBS box go to the DNS management MMC and enable zone transfers to the new DNS server's IP
  3. On the new box create a secondary zone for your DNS domain
  4. Update your clients to use the 2nd server (likely via DHCP as stated above), perhaps with the failing SBS server as their 2ndary DNS server

If the SBS box dies you will need to make your new DNS server the primary, only the primary DNS server can change the zone database (unless it's AD integrated but fix this before worrying about that).

TheFiddlerWins
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  • I have a 2 new windows server 2012 boxes that im setting up now but thats going to take me a couple days at my current workload. I need to fix this like today. the settings seem to be either coming from the server or from the little helper program that installs when you attach to the domain of a sbs. – Crash893 Aug 20 '13 at 17:02
  • What is the output of "ipconfig /all"? It should tell you if the settings are from DHCP or static – TheFiddlerWins Aug 20 '13 at 19:00
  • static Like i said before i think the little helper app is "manually" putting the dns in – Crash893 Aug 21 '13 at 19:16
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Configure a second DNS server in your DHCP scope options; use one of your ISP's DNS servers, probably.

It's a terrible practice to use a DNS server that can't resolve your internal AD DNS namespace, but if you've only got a single server to begin with, you don't have much other choice.

mfinni
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