8. Additional Points to Note
If the network connection between your unit and OUCS is unavailable then you may find that logging in becomes very slow, or experience other name resolution issues. This happens because although most Active Directory records are registered on your local DNS servers, which continue to be accessible, the host records that translate between names of servers and IP addresses are held on the OUCS DNS servers.
If this is a problem for your unit, you may be able to provide resilience by
running a secondary name server for the ox.ac.uk zone and asking OUCS to arrange
for zone transfers to be allowed to a designated server. You then need to make
sure that your domain controllers are configured to look up requests for
ox.ac.uk via this name server. You can do this by configuring your DNS servers
to forward requests for information about ox.ac.uk to this secondary server (add
an entry for ox.ac.uk in the Forwarders tab in the
[Properties] of the server object in the DNS management tool, or
on Windows 2008, by an entry in the Conditional Forwarders
folder).
You may be able to configure one of your existing Windows DNS servers to act as
this secondary server. To enquire about this service, email OUCS in the usual
way. If you decide to use one of your Windows DNS servers to manage the
secondary zone, use the DNS Manager to create a new zone of
type [Secondary] and configure zone transfers as directed by OUCS.
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