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At the moment, the company I work for has an external facing DNS through server 2008 and our internal server points to a Linux server (I wasn't here for the original setup so more specifics are harder to come by). The issue we're running into is that the internal DNS is flighty as all get out. We may or may not be able to hit remote access through the PC names but can always hit through direct IP which of course makes automation next to impossible to predict. I've been tasked with setting up internal DNS on the Windows server.

Is there a way to pull the DNS info from the Linux server and migrate it to Windows? I'm trying to save myself some work and also needing to figure out how hosed the DNS in the Linux machine is. It might be easier to start from scratch on DNS for windows but this is a fully setup company with production in full swing and next to impossible to take down for a setup and switch over that may or may not work on the first go, so live migration options are preferred.

HopelessN00b
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Mortedr
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  • Configure the Windows server with secondary zones for the zones in question and configure the Linux server to allow zone transfers to the Windows server. – joeqwerty Feb 25 '15 at 16:39

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Hopefully, presumably, your Linux server is running BIND, and in that case, it's possible, easy, and even documented by Microsoft. Though, even if it running something weird, the same basic process applies - move the information over by making the Windows server a secondary DNS server, then kill off the Linux server (or its DNS server, at least).

Microsoft checklist/instructions on migrating from BIND to Windows DNS:

  1. Configure the BIND servers as the master servers for each of the zones that you want to migrate.

  2. On the server running the DNS Server service, add secondary zones for all of your existing zones that are hosted at the BIND-based DNS servers.

  3. If necessary, create reverse lookup zones for all of your existing reverse lookup zones that are hosted at the BIND-based DNS servers.

  4. After completing the zone transfers, convert any of the secondary zones to primary zones for the zones that were obtained from primary zones at the BIND servers.

  5. Optional: If the DNS server running Windows Server 2008 is a domain controller, store the zone in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).

  6. Configure the previous primary servers to be secondary servers for the migrated zones, or demote the previous primary servers.

  7. For the other secondary zones that remain, update the master servers for those zones to use the new primary DNS servers running Windows Server 2008.

HopelessN00b
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  • Excellent idea, my main problem is my insecurity with the linux side of this operation. I have only a passing knowledge with linux in general and even less with CentOS. I'll dig around on their forums though and figure out how to tell if it matches the information you described. Cheers – Mortedr Feb 25 '15 at 17:27
  • @Mortedr Only 1 and 6 are steps on the Linux server... and step 1 may well not be necesarry, if that's currently how the server's configured, so you shouldn't have a hard time... If you do, though, we've got lots of BIND and/or Linux questions here too. – HopelessN00b Feb 25 '15 at 17:52