Setting up extension-less forward lookups on Windows Server 2008

Question

We have a Windows 2008 server that is acting as a DNS for the local network. The server is not administered by me.

In the DNS management console, I can add new forward lookups. There already is a number of them:

• server1.companyname.local => 192.168.0.2
• backup.companyname.local => 192.168.0.3

but they are all inside the .companyname.local zone.

However, I need to set up a small number of "extensionless" lookups like this:

• projects => 192.168.0.16
• admin => 192.168.0.17

etc. etc.

Is there a clean but simple way to do this? I can add a new zone in the console, but I'm not sure how to set one up that doesn't have an extension. I seem to be lacking the right keywords to Google this....

Answer 1

I apologise if I'm oh so wrong here, but I don't think there's any such thing. You've always got to have a TLD / DNS root or whatever. I think what you're used to seeing is companies having things like http://webmail - HOWEVER, this is really resolving to http://webmail.company.local

This is done by the machine knowing which domain it's in and /or by using the "DNS Suffix" in the network connection settings.

Standard practice tends to be to create a ".local" zone for this stuff, otherwise it just goes under the companyname.local name like in your first examples.

In other words, add projects & admin alongside the others and users will NOT have to enter .company.local as long as they're on the domain or have the default DNS suffix entered.