We have our main server (win2k3) which basically does everything… Domain Controller, DNS, WINS, DHCP, etc. plus it has IIS installed and houses the company intranet. We also have a “backup” server which is for fault tolerance. It has pretty much the same things installed except that it does not host any intranet files. I have got the DNS configuration correct as far as I can tell. When the primary server goes down, the secondary essentially takes over and everyone in the office can still login/out and have working iternet connections to the outside world. However, the problem that we are having now is that it seems like it’s rather hit or miss which server a given machine will talk to for it’s DNS information at any given time. This poses a problem with our intranet because then both servers *THINK* that they are domain.com.
So if someone at PC1 tries to get to the intranet by typing domain.com, they may or may not get it. If they happen to hit the primary server for the request then they’ll get the intranet site. However, if they happen to hit the secondary server, which does not host the intranet, they get an “Under Construction” default IIS page. However, if you type in the IP address of the primary server, you get the intranet every time. So the problem is with the resolution of the name domain.com and is entirely dependent on which DNS server your computer happens to be using at that time.
I have done everything I can think of to specify Server1 as the primary. When you run IPConfig on all client machines, they always have Server1 listed first, and even the secondary server has server1 listed first. But it still doesn’t seem to make a difference. It seems to be rather arbitrary which server will respond when a PC has a request.
So, to make a really long story short… my question is – How do I force this primary DNS server to really be a primary and to answer all requests all the time unless it is dead?
