How do I monitor DNS queries on a Win 2003 server?

Question

Our main DNS server (Windows 2003 server) answers for 400+ domains. How can I see which domains it gets most queries for? Is there a way to get statistics/graphs for this?

Answer 1

There is no built-in statistics mechanism to give you any kind of per-domain query statistics.

Off the top of my head I can think of two things you could do:

• Use Wireshark (probably the "text only" version, "tshark") to capture incoming DNS queries to files. You could parse the files and report on them.

• Turn on the "Debug Logging" functionality on the DNS server (in the "Properties" for the DNS server), ticking only the boxes for "Incoming", "UDP", "Queries", and "Request". You'll have to parse the log file that the DNS server generates, but it may be easier than parsing output from Wireshark.

Answer 2

dnscmd is a native tool built into the OS that will give you statistics. syntax example dnscmd . /statistics. there are about 2 dozen variables however I don't know if there is a way to report back on a specific zone or graph which gets the most requests.

Check http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/cc772069%28WS.10%29.aspx

this might help point in the right direction.