Not quiet....

...Failed the 70-291 with a score of 583 last Monday. I felt little frustrated since I studied my butt of trying all of the practice and labs in the MS Press book. I had 47 questions, only 2 TCP/IP Subnetting questions (which i didnt mind since place too much emphasis on that section) but there was alot on DNS. I thought I knew DNS but not until I saw the situations the test threw at me. Unfortuantly at work I am a mere desktop technician so I dont have any real world expereince with anything server unless its my own practice at home. Another thing that I noticed was that the questions were waayy too long to do.

There are three questions I have to though that I cant find any good answers for online...

What are DNS Root servers and what do they do exactly?
What is the point of Stub Zones and their purpose?
Since when is "Conditional Forwarding" a type of zone to implement on a DNS server?

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DanielHughes

Bad luck Will. Keep trying and I am sure you will get there.
I am currently studying for the 291 as well; I know it wont help you but I will spend a bit more time on DNS.

dynamik

WillTech105 wrote:

What are DNS Root servers and what do they do exactly?

They're used for recursion: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Understanding-DNS-Recursion.html

Also, you can make your own DNS server a root server (.) if you do not want this to take place or if you want to be very selective about the domains that can be resolved.

WillTech105 wrote:

What is the point of Stub Zones and their purpose?

Stub zones are used to point to name servers of another domain. Unlike delegations, they do not have to follow the DNS hierarchy, so you could have stub zones for two child DNS domains pointing at each other, so the query wouldn't have to travel up and down the hierarchy. Also unlike delegations, the list of name servers is updated automatically; you have to configure these manually with delegations.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779197.aspx

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/DNS_Stub_Zones.html

WillTech105 wrote:

Since when is "Conditional Forwarding" a type of zone to implement on a DNS server?

It's not technically a zone, but I guess it falls in that same logical grouping. You may want to conditionally forward requests for a domain to specific servers instead of creating a delegation or a stub zone. There are pros and cons of each method, and there is usually no clear-cut right or wrong answer. You'll often need to choose the "most correct" based on the scenario and requirements.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304491

amp2030

I'm studying for 291 now... all those 3 questions are answered in the MS Press book.

DNS Root servers, on the internet, are the topmost level, responsible for the "." zone. You can implement them internally too, but they won't be able to resolve any internet hostnames.

A Stub Zone is a step up from a delegation, you can think of it as a dynamically updated delegation (ok, bad phrasing, i know). It keeps track of all nameservers of the zone you're creating the stub for, so your dns server can contact them directly in order to resolve a query. It's just NS records, and it's updated whenever the zone gets new ones, as opposed to delegations which you'd have to update manually.

Conditional forwarding is not a type of zone, it is a way to filter which queries get forwarded where. For instance, you don't want your local domain queries to be forwarded to an internet dns server, or you have a domain your users access frequently and you can improve resolution by forwarding those queries to its DNS servers.

Again, I'm just learning this stuff myself, so take my answer with a grain of salt. Just go through the MS Press book more thoroughly and you'll find better answers.

EDIT: aaand dynamik beat me to it with a clearer response, hehe.

Anyway mate, don't despair, use second shot, you'll get it next time.

slinuxuzer

Sorry you failed, unfortunatley alot of hands on is needed for this test, it is prolly the most important test in the MCSA/MCSE in my opinion.

Conditional forwarding is not a type of zone.

A stub zone is used to resolved names between differnt name spaces, say you have two domain trees Domaina.local and Domainb.local and someone in DomainA query's for Fileserver.domainb.com against a DNS server in DomainA.local Dns server in DomainA will have a updated list of authoratative DNS servers for Domainb.local in a Domainb.local stub zone.

THis prevents administrators from having to communicate a lot of DNs server changes

Technically conditional forwarding can send query's over but this is a static list of Dns servers, the same is true for delegations.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779197.aspx (stub zone resource)

Root Dns servers are at the Top level of the DNS hierachy, if your not familiar with them you haven't done your due diligence with DNS study for this test, it is about 30+ percent of this test. Google Root Dns servers and Global recursion.

You need a test lab with atleast two Domain controllers, and most likely three one of them being a child domain. This will allow you to really lab this test.

Check out CBT Nuggets, these are really great. Also transcender is great. For your labs look into using Vmware workstation or server, this is the best way to lab things.

hope this helps

WillTech105

Thanks for the quick and detailed responses. I'll have to give DNS a detailed look. Thanks again.

royal

DNS is just about the biggest topic. I'm surprised you took the exam without even knowing what a Root Server is.

I also included lots of DNS links in my sticky. Those should help you out.

WillTech105

Well I DID know the jist of root servers and stub servers, but when these were thrown into situations I was like little confused.

WillTech105

Sorry to double-post, but I had to bring this back to the top of the forum list...

I started re-reading the material and I got the theory down pat, but I believe the problem is that currently my employer has NO DHCP (static IPs on our machines) and our DNS is very minimal and forget about IPsec and RRAS its non-existent.

Thus it is kind of difficult to put theory into practice when the best practice I have is the practice labs in the MSPress textbook. Is there any "pre-made" DNS/DHCP/RRAS/ect. downloads or practices out there that can get me more of a hands on? Thanks!

dynamik

Just come up with your own scenarios and try to implement them. What do you have to work with?

WillTech105

Right now I have two WinSvr03 machines and a XP machine that I setup with within a domain and have them all connected by a switch and all able to ping each other. I was thinking more of some kind of DNS database I can download or something similar where I can get something "complex" and then tweak it around so I can be more familiar with the scenarios presented in the exam.

dynamik

Are those physical machines or VMs? Add a couple child domains and try to get everything communicating. I can't think of anything like that you could simply download and play around with.

WillTech105

Real machines. I do have VMWare Server but for nostalgic reasons I prefer the real hard boxes in front of me connected physically.

dynamik

How you study is up to you, but it seems like you're limiting yourself unnecessarily. Adding just one or two VMs per machine will allow you to create a significantly more complex environment and work on the things you're having trouble with.