Comment Win2k, Active Directory, and DDNS (Score 1) 337
Here's a few pieces of information for you, that I got at a briefing by Microsoft's marketdroids a few months ago. Take the following with a grain of salt, since any technical data was filtered through a non-technical marketing person, and then my memory (which isn't the most reliable storage):
According to the briefing, ActiveDirectory uses DNS "like a database" to resolve the names of any Active Directory objects. Dynamic DNS is required, since any changes to the ActiveDirectory name space require updates to the DNS data. We were told that ActiveDirectory wouldn't work without it, and the implication was that Active Directory stored more than just machine names and IP addresses in there.
I asked why use DNS for this, when LDAP (for example) already exists specifically for managing directory information. I got an oblique answer that Active Directory can import information from an LDAP server, but can't update one. Probably the marketdroid didn't understand my question, or know the answer.
I also asked if a RFC-compliant non-Windows Dynamic DNS implementation would work with Win2k and Active Directory, and was told that it would, but that Microsoft very strongly recommended using only their DDNS (anything else is unsupported).
My overall impression is that they're following the RFC's for DDNS, but filling the DNS database up with a lot of records that don't have anything to do with machine-name to IP-address mapping.
According to the briefing, ActiveDirectory uses DNS "like a database" to resolve the names of any Active Directory objects. Dynamic DNS is required, since any changes to the ActiveDirectory name space require updates to the DNS data. We were told that ActiveDirectory wouldn't work without it, and the implication was that Active Directory stored more than just machine names and IP addresses in there.
I asked why use DNS for this, when LDAP (for example) already exists specifically for managing directory information. I got an oblique answer that Active Directory can import information from an LDAP server, but can't update one. Probably the marketdroid didn't understand my question, or know the answer.
I also asked if a RFC-compliant non-Windows Dynamic DNS implementation would work with Win2k and Active Directory, and was told that it would, but that Microsoft very strongly recommended using only their DDNS (anything else is unsupported).
My overall impression is that they're following the RFC's for DDNS, but filling the DNS database up with a lot of records that don't have anything to do with machine-name to IP-address mapping.
