what is DNS Zone

In Domain Name System (DNS), a DNS namespace can be divided into multiple zones called dns zones. A dns zone stores information about one or more domains. A zone becomes the authoritative source for a domain if its dns domain name information included in that zone.

In windows 2003, the DNS zone is created with a a storage database for a single main (root) DNS domain name. If other sub domains of the that domain are created, then those sub domains can either be part of the same zone or delegated to another zone .

After creating standard(file based) DNS Zone, the zone name information is stored in a file, By befault the zone (primary zone) file is named zone_name.dns and is located at %winroot%\system32\dns.

If the zone integrated with Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), then all primary dns zones and stub dns zones can be stored in Active Directory Domain Services(AD DS).

Forward lookup dns zones provide name-to-address resolution. Reverse lookup dns zones are optional, and they provide address-to-name resolution.

For example, the following illustrates DNS zone creation for the blogspot.com domain.

If the blogspot.com domain is created, then a single zone is created for all of the blogspot.com namespace. If the blogspot.com domain uses subdomains, say dns-infoall.blogspot.com then this subdomain must be included in that zone or delegated away to another zone.