Two servers, one domain name :(

**mark** · 11th September 2008, 11:04 PM

((I've asked this before but got no answers. So trying again...))

We did a silly thing..

We have an intranet email server using our domain name school.co.uk with /webmail tacked onto the end, and setup our new win2003 server to have the same domain name. Doh!

Now all our clients, instead of going to the email server go to the domain controller instead.

How should we fix this?

Should we create a pointer to send the domain name to the email server IP?
Should we get the reference to our email server changed? (to something like: webmail.school.co.uk?)

Thanks for your help. (simplistic guides would be good!

)

**SYNACK** · 12th September 2008, 03:15 AM

A couple of options here; the first would be to change the reference to webmail.school as then you can simply add a new record in DNS that points to whichever server is hosting it internally or externally (split DNS).

The other possibly easier option would be to set up the offending DC with IIS web server and putting in a redirect page at the location that is expected. You would just use the default site and add a webmail folder. In this folder all you need is a default.asp page which consists of:

Code:

<html>
<% response.redirect("internalmail.school") %>
</html>

This just runs a little ASP which will redirect anyone to the internal address instead, its quick and trivial to set up.

**DMcCoy** · 12th September 2008, 09:12 AM

I'm not quite sure I understand, having the same domain name is not an issue, they surely have different hostnames?

server1.domain.school
server2.domain.school

If server2 was actually an external server then you would just need to add that external IP as a host in dns.

If you are trying to trying to use your external domain internally (I do this) then you just create both zones and add the internal IPs for internal hosts and external ones for services outside where they are needed.

**dave.81** · 12th September 2008, 09:47 AM

We have the same issue here, well kind of, domain is same as external website.

We just put a pointer in the DNS to the external website, would assume you can do the same for internal emails.

**mark** · 12th September 2008, 12:47 PM

Thanks a lot for the advice guys!

Originally Posted by DMcCoy

I'm not quite sure I understand, having the same domain name is not an issue, they surely have different hostnames?

server1.domain.school
server2.domain.school

If server2 was actually an external server then you would just need to add that external IP as a host in dns.

If you are trying to trying to use your external domain internally (I do this) then you just create both zones and add the internal IPs for internal hosts and external ones for services outside where they are needed.

Yes - why does that happen? surely IIS must be on there causing that?? (I'll check it out)

Both servers are on the local LAN. The email server is a linux box running slackware. The external domain is the same name, but exclusively School.co.uk ...the intranet is exclusively minus the www bit.

From the WAN all works correctly, at the WAN DNS server is still pointing to the email IP. It's just internally things are screwed.

**SYNACK** · 12th September 2008, 05:30 PM

Inside the network the base domain name resolves to one or all of the DCs so if you have server1.school.uk and server2.school.uk as DCs but have your webmail at school.uk then when you do a DNS lookup on school.uk it will resolve to one of the DCs usually the PDC. It does this for domain tasks like joining computers so I am unsure of how adding a pointer would affect it as it may redirect authentication stuff too.

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