How to configure DNS server to share the service between two differnet domains

Question

I have encoutered a problem on a network integration.

Systems

There are 2 domains on the same level: domain1.local and domain2.local. Each domains is managed by a Win Server 2003 server1 (192.168.225.42) and server2 (192.168.220.16) (DNS server and Domain Controller).
Each domain is declared as a stub domain on each other.
Alias have been added to resolve serverone as serverone.domain1.local on server2 and servertwo as servertwo.domain.loc on server1.

1. on server1

   C:>ping server1
   Pinging server1 [192.168.225.42] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.42.16: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

   C:>ping server1.domain1.local
   Pinging server1.domain1.local [192.168.225.42] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.42.16: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

   C:>ping servertwo
   Pinging servertwo.domain2.local [192.168.220.16] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.42.16: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

   C:>ping servertwo.domain2.local
   Pinging servertwo.domain2.local [192.168.220.16] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.42.16: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

2. on server2

   C:>ping server2
   Pinging server2 [192.168.220.16] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.220.16: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

   C:>ping server2.domain2.local
   Pinging server2.domain2.local [192.168.220.16] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.220.16: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

   C:>ping serverone
   Pinging serverone.domain1.local [192.168.225.42] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.225.42: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

   C:>ping serverone.domain1.local
   Pinging servertwo.domain2.local [192.168.225.42] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.225.42: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

Problem

Domains can't resolve the server1 and server2.

1. on server1

   C:>ping server2
   Ping request could not find host dc-server.localdomain.org. Please check the name and try again.

   C:>ping server2.domain2.local
   Pinging server2.domain2.local [192.168.220.16] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.220.16: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

2. on server2

   C:>ping server1
   Ping request could not find host dc-server.localdomain.org. Please check the name and try again.

   C:>ping server1.domain1.local
   Pinging server1.domain1.local [192.168.225.42] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 192.168.225.42: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

Question

Actually I I can work around this by adding a host file entry mapping server1 and server2.
But how can I use DNS configuration to avoid this hack ?
I've tried to create Aliases without success...

Answer 1

On server1 go to Network Connections -> Local Area Connection N -> Properties -> TCP/IP -> Properties -> General -> Advanced -> DNS tab. Here make sure you have selected Append these DNS suffixes (in order) and put into the list:

domain1.local.
domain2.local.

Ping, like most programs, uses a built-in DNS resolver. If you give it any name, for example thatserver, it firstly tries to query DNS server for thatserver.. If the DNS replies "not found", it tries to append suffixes. In this case, it would search for thatserver.domain1.local. and if "not found", then for thatserver.domain2.local.. If the domain is not in the list, it will not search it - disregarding the fact that the domain is defined on a 127.0.0.1 DNS server.

Vice versa on server2 (same thing, but the order of the domains in the list reversed).