The Local Zoo - Microsoft Windows Tips and Tricks

Domain Suffix Search List

DHCP is great. You can tell all your clients exactly which server to use for which service, change all the machines configurations with a couple of clicks on the server - I love it. Unfortunately, Microsoft DHCP has one downfall (at least in the way I want to use it) : it doesn't let you give out a list of domain suffixes to search. When you administer a network that contains multiple domains, this can be a real pain. I don't want users to have to know which domain suffix the machine server1 has. I just want them to be able to connect to server1. For example, if I am looking after the domains thelocalzoo.co.uk and ontinternet.com, and I have 2 servers : server1.thelocalzoo.co.uk and server2.ontinternet.com, I just want my users to connect by the host name (server1 or server2). Having a domain suffix search list makes this possible. If my domain suffix search list has thelocalzoo.co.uk first, and ontinternet.com second, and I want to connect to server2 (say using ping), I would type the command "ping server2" and my machine would try to resolve server2.thelocalzoo.co.uk. It would find this doesn't exist in DNS, then try to resolve server2.ontinternet.com. This produces an IP address, which the machine then passes to the ping command, which can now connect to the correct machine!! It turns out that the way to get the DNS Search Suffix List is almost as simple as DHCP - Group Policy. There is an entry in Group Policy - Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Network/DNS Client/DNS Suffix Search List, which does exactly what I want!! No more amending the IP properties of the network cards in each machine, and entering manual lists!