Add a DNS zone

A DNS zone is a contiguous portion of DNS domain namespace over which a DNS server has authority. A DNS server can be authoritative for multiple DNS zones.

A DNS zone contains the resource records for all of the names within that zone. Zone files are used if DNS data is not integrated with Active Directory. If DNS and Active Directory are integrated, then DNS data can be stored in Active Directory.

The following types of DNS Zones are supported in IPAM:

Primary zone	A zone is a primary zone if the DNS server is the authoritative source for all domain in the zone. A primary zone can be stored in Active Directory if the DNS Server is a domain controller.
Secondary zone	A read-only copy of a zone copied from the primary server using zone transfer, used for load balancing and fault tolerance. For more information on Zone transfers, see Understanding zones and zone transfers (© 2019 Microsoft, available at https://docs.microsoft.com, obtained July 29, 2019).
Stub zone	A stub zone is similar to a secondary zone except it contains only those resource records necessary to identify the authoritative Domain Name System (DNS) servers for that zone. For more information, see Understanding stub zones (© 2009 Microsoft, available at https://docs.microsoft.com, obtained July 29, 2019).

There are two kinds of DNS Lookup that can be applied to primary and secondary zones.

Forward lookup	This is the default. This resolves fully qualified domain names to IP address.
Reverse lookup	Resolves IP addresses to resource names on the network. For more information, see Reverse lookup (© 2019 Microsoft, available at https://docs.microsoft.com, obtained July 29, 2019).

To create a DNS Zone:

1. Go to My Dashboards > IP Addresses > DHCP & DNS Management.
2. Select the DNS Zones tab, and click Add.

   If using the legacy view, you can also select a server on the DNS Server tab and click Add New > DNS Zone.

3. Select the DNS server to which this zone will be applied, and click Next.

   

4. Select the zone type.
   • For a Primary zone, you can choose to store the zone in Active Directory if the DNS server is a domain controller.
   • If you select Secondary or Stub, you will need to specify the Master DNS server.

   

5. Select the DNS Lookup Type: 
   • For Forward lookup, enter the name for this DNS Zone.
   • For Reverse lookup, enter the Network ID or Reverse lookup zone name.
6. Click Next.
7. Enter the Zone File Name, or use the default. The zone file is used to store zone data on the DNS server computer. The default is the DNS Zone Name with a .dns extension.
8. If you want to enable Zone Transfers, check Enable Zone Transfer, and either accept the default transfer interval, or enter the interval required.

   Zone transfers are used to keep a secondary or stub DNS zone synchronized with its primary DNS server. You can choose to either perform a full transfer at set intervals or use incremental zone transfers to only pulls the zone changes needed to synchronize the copy of the zone with its source.

9. Click the Custom DNS zone transfer interval, and set the time interval if you want to use this method rather than full transfer of the entire zone database.

   

10. Click Next.
11. Click Manage Custom Properties to open custom properties settings. Add or import any applicable custom properties. Click Next to continue.
12. Review the information, and click Add zone.

    

13. Click Close.