Windows 2008 R2 DNS Server - can the name be changed to something different than the computer name?

Question

I have a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise machine (we'll say it's got the computer name set to 'MYSERVER') running the DNS server role - it's not in a domain (System shows it as in a work group called 'WORKGROUP').

I want it to show up in the DNS configuration as 'ns1.mydomain.com' instead of 'MYSERVER' - mydomain.com is an external 'normal' domain, it's not isolated to an intranet or behind a firewall or anything.

I first looked in the DNS configuration after adding the role, but didn't see anything there for changing the Name property.

I tried changing it via WMI, but that didn't work - the MSDN page for the MicrosoftDNS_Server class lists the Name property as readonly which I'm guessing is why the updates weren't taking effect.

Reinstalling the DNS role is fine if that's necessary (if it can't be changed once the role is installed/activated/running), but I don't see how to configure it during role install either.

Thanks!

Answer 1

It's not the answer I'm looking for, but since I mentioned that the issue was the auto-generated SOA and NS records, I wanted to also include the code I got working for fixing them up after the zone creation.

I didn't modify the question with this since I don't want to confuse what the actual question is, but in case someone else runs across this in the future and there's not a better answer by then, at least this will be a potential workaround for them.

public void FixupResourceRecords()
{
    var resourceRecordClass = new ManagementClass(@"\\localhost\root\MicrosoftDNS:MicrosoftDNS_ResourceRecord");

    var oldServerName = ...;
    var newServerName = ...;

    var search = " " + oldServerName.ToLower() + ".";
    var replace = " " + newServerName.ToLower() + ".";

    // we want the subclasses too (including SOA and NS records)
    var options = new EnumerationOptions() { EnumerateDeep = true };
    var allResourceRecords = resourceRecordClass.GetInstances(options).Cast<ManagementObject>().ToList();

    Console.WriteLine("Checking {0} resource records", allResourceRecords.Count);
    var resourceRecordsToFix = (
        from record in allResourceRecords
        let textVersion = record["TextRepresentation"].ToString().ToLower()
        let replacedVersion = textVersion.Replace(search, replace)
        where replacedVersion != textVersion
        select new
        {
            textVersion,
            replacedVersion,
            record,
        }
    ).ToList();

    Console.WriteLine("Fixing up {0} resource records", resourceRecordsToFix.Count);
    resourceRecordsToFix.ForEach(tuple => 
    {
        // first delete the old one
        tuple.record.Delete();
        resourceRecordClass.InvokeMethod("CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation", new object[]
            {
                tuple.record["DnsServerName"],
                tuple.record["ContainerName"],
                tuple.replacedVersion,
            });
    });
}