How would you guys handle this?

helms20

You need to move one primary DNS zone to another up and coming DNS server. I am really wanting to find a link to microsofts way but would also like to hear how others handle this situation.

Thanks

Oh and the new zone must be primary and needs to be seemless to the clients.

slinuxuzer

I think probably the best way would be to create a secondary on the new server and after a Axfer transfer change it to primary after deleting the original.

Of course the best way is to use active directory integrated zones as they can do incremental transfer and all multiple read/write copies.

royal

I agree with slinuxuzer and would do exactly what he explained.

Also, just an FYI, IXFR doesn't have anything to do really with if it's AD integrated or if it's primary vs secondary. It has to do with which version of Windows you are using. Windows NT4 supported only AXFR and Windows 2000/2003 support IXFR for all zone transfers.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/940cdf9b-8e43-4b08-9a53-9fc2152644031033.mspx?mfr=true

Note
For servers running Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, incremental zone transfer through IXFR query is supported. For earlier versions of the DNS service and for many other DNS server implementations, incremental zone transfer is not available and only full-zone (AXFR) queries and transfers are used to replicate zones.

In earlier DNS implementations, any request for an update of zone data required a full transfer of the entire zone database using an AXFR query. With incremental transfer, an alternate query type (IXFR) can be used instead. This allows the secondary server to pull only those zone changes it needs to synchronize its copy of the zone with its source, either a primary or secondary copy of the zone maintained by another DNS server.