Currently using DNS on Windows NT 4.0 Planning on migrating to Windows 2000 servers for DNS
Revisiting the question of whether to stay with Microsoft DNS server or use 3rd party software. Have been very happy with Win DNS, but now anticipating a few more needs: 1. Automated configuration of secondary servers so we only have to maintain/change entires in the primary server 2. Support for both commandline and GUI utilities. 3. GUI utilities for end-user "self-service" allowing them to change host records, MX settings, etc. BUT also security settings for us to control very granularly which kinds of records/changes are allowed. (For example, we are considering selling paid DNS services and offering different levels of service depending upon what the end user is allowed to do.) I'm inclined to stay with Microsoft. My understanding (which may be wrong) is that Windows 2000 DNS, unlike the NT 4 version, is fully scriptable using ADSI and also commandline utilities in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit. However, I'd prefer not to "roll my own" end-user GUI. Although feasible, I suspect a lot more work with ASP/ADSI than we want to tackle right now. Are there any 3rd party GUI's of the sort described above for Win 2000 DNS? Active Directory? These DNS servers will be public and not our internal servers (we will do a classic "split DNS" and keep our internal systems firewalled and private.) Should we run AD on these two servers? A quick look into AD seems to indicate that we if did make these "integrated" DNS/AD servers, we would get multi-master replication between them instead of master/slave (meaning the servers would keep each other updated automatically). Is this right or a really bad idea? I'm concerned about the security of running AD updates across the public Internet - even though it would be restricted to just between these two servers and nothing else. Anyone else do this yet? Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
