We all have seen what DNS could do for your environment especially if they are configured correctly. I had a lot of issues recently adding a new DNS server (Windows 2003) to our domain. It was an old server just barely capable of running the bare minimum (which was a mistake! I confess!).
After the initial DNS install, created the required zones hoping they would be populated from other DNS servers, but NO! The new server started updating its piers, hence losing all our DNS records within our environment in minutes. Luckily I don’t start any job unless I have some kind of a backup.
The backup I took was an export of our DNS records (right-clicking the zone and Export List…). We know there isn’t a way of importing records back into the same environment through the GUI. The exported file had to be restructured in order to be imported through a command line utility.
In order to import back into our Windows 2003 DNS server, we followed the procedure below:
1. Opened the text file from within MS Excel
2. Modified the file structure to have:
a. Cell A – DNSCMD /RecordAdd
b. Cell B – ZoneName
c. Cell C – MachineName
d. Cell D – RecordType(A,MX etc.)
e. Cell E – IPAddress
3. Save the fie
4. Open it within Notepad and replace all comma’s with a single space using the find and replace functionality.
5. After saving the file, change the file extension to .cmd
6. Drag and drop the file into a command prompt window.
You will see all your records re-populating into your DNS.
SysCloud.dev 