[ActiveDir] DNS over multiple AD domains

[Lancaster, Lin]

Title: DNS over multiple AD domains

I've read the DNS archives but I'm still confused. In my situation I have  a empty root domain xyz.corp setup. Both DCs in this root domain are running DNS service fine. Now I want to add two additional domains - hq.xyz.corp and ma.xyz.corp. The domain hq.xyz.corp will be in the same physical location as the root domain. The domain ma.xyz.corp will be in a different physical location over a WAN link. I'm trying to decide which machines I should load DNS services on and what the DNS servers the domain controllers for the new domains should point at. It seems like when I create ma.xyz.corp if I don't have the DC for that domain pointing at the DC for the root domain it won't be able to find the SRV records for the root domain. But if I do that then it probably isn't going to populate the DNS service on the ma.xyz.corp DC with the DNS records for that domain and I'll have to point clients to the DNS server on the root DC over the WAN. I've thought about adding a root hint for the .corp domain to all the DNS servers. Sorry to ramble. Anyone have any suggestions on a best practice for this situation?