Can't Resolve local DNS over VPN (Two Locations, two servers, Two domains)

gator2014

Honorable
Feb 5, 2014
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10,510
Hi All,
I have a site to site vpn that is working correctly between two locations. Both locations have windows 2008 servers and both have individual local domains. I can ping from both sides and hit everything going both ways as well as I can bring up shares on both sides by ip addresses. I can not bring up shares by dns server name (\\servername\share) either side. DNS works fine locally on each side just not through the VPN.

As a test, I added 192.168.1.3 to a HOST file on a pc from network 192.168.2.x and it will resolve by either name or IP.. If I take it back out and reboot the pc then it doesn't work. I really do not want to edit each host file on each pc but rather would like to create DNS pointers, forwarders, etc on both servers but not exactly sure how.. Does anyone have a suggestion on the most practical way?

 

gator2014

Honorable
Feb 5, 2014
2
0
10,510
I found the problem. Setup conditional forwarders and resolved. Instructions below for someone else that may need help.

Location 1 will would need a conditional forwarder for location2.local that forwards to the dns server at Location 2.
Location 2 will would need a conditional forwarder for location1.local that forwards to the dns server at Location 1.

The second section is the host machine. The host machines will be able to access a server on the their own domain by typing \\servername but will need to type \\servername.location2.local to access a server over the vpn. If you want them to be able to access a server over the vpn by just \\servername you will need to append both dns suffix to the host machines.
http://support.simpledns.com/KB/a138/how-to-configure-dns-suffixes-on-windows-vista2008.aspx