Configuring multiple addresses on a DNS server in Windows Server 2008



By default, the DNS service responds on all IP addresses bound to the server. You face no real performance penalty in enabling the DNS service to respond on all bound IP addresses, but in some situations, you may want to decrease the addresses to only those that you specifically want related with the DNS service. You may allocate two addresses that are always used for DNS, but, in effect, ‘‘reserve’’ the other IP addresses on the server for other uses. Assume, for instance, that you have the addresses 192.168.0.2 through .10 bound to the server.

If you allow the DNS service to respond on all addresses, users may possibly start using 192.168.0.10 for DNS if they know that it is there. A few months later, you remove .10 from the server because you want to use it elsewhere. Suddenly, those users who have been using .10 as a DNS server find themselves unable to resolve. If you start out limiting DNS to a specific set of addresses that is always used on the server for DNS, you can avoid the problem. In addition, you may want to restrict DNS to a subset of the available addresses for security, firewall configuration, or other infrastructure reasons.

You can configure the addresses on which the server responds through the Interfaces tab of the server’s property sheet. Open the DNS console, right-click the server, and choose Properties from the context menu to open the property sheet for the server. On the Interfaces page, choose All IP Addresses if you want the server to respond to DNS queries on all IP addresses bound to the server. Choose the Only the Following IP Addresses option if you want to limit the server to responding on only the IP addresses listed in the associated box. Use Add and Remove to change the contents of the list.