Reference: DNS deployment roles - BlueCat Address Manager - 9.4.0

Address Manager Administration Guide
Locale
English
Product name
BlueCat Address Manager
Version
9.4.0

The following describes the DNS deployment roles that you can configure in Address Manager.

The following DNS server roles are available:
DNS Role Description
Primary Deploys files and settings to create a DNS primary server.
Hidden Primary Deploys files and settings to create a DNS primary, but without name server and glue records, thus hiding the server from DNS queries.
Secondary Deploys files and settings to create a DNS secondary server.
Stealth Secondary Deploys files and settings to create a DNS secondary, but without name server and glue records, thus hiding the server from DNS queries.
Forwarder Deploys a forwarding zone in BIND, or conditional forwarding in Microsoft DNS, to forward queries for a specific zone to one or more DNS servers. Forwarding requires that recursion be enabled; recursion is automatically enabled when you select the Forwarder role. Use this role with external servers. For instructions on how to create an external server, refer to Adding Other DNS Servers.
Stub A stub zone deploys a zone that contains only name server records used to identify the authoritative DNS servers for that zone. DNS lookups to a stub zone will return the name server and corresponding host records, which will then result in a separate query to the name servers for the host in question.

Stub zones are similar to secondary zones, where it gathers the record data from a designated server. However, stub zones are different from secondary zones in two ways:

  • Stub zones only contain the records needed to identify the primary server; namely the SOA and NS records for the zone, along with the A records for each NS record.
  • Stub zones don't obtain their records using zone transfers. Instead, it issues queries against its configured authoritative servers to obtain the appropriate records.
Because of these differences, Address Manager treats Stub zones differently than Secondary zones. Stub zones can be configured to use multiple servers to pull data from. Address Manager will automatically add all query-able servers; any server with a Primary or Secondary role (but not Hidden Primary or Stealth Secondary), to the Stub zone. Address Manager will configure the stub server in the following order:
  • Any listed primary server is added as the first server.
  • Secondary servers are added in IP order from lowest to highest.
Note that this provides redundancy support that isn't available for Secondary servers.

Use stub zones to resolve names between separate DNS namespaces. For example, you might use this type of zone to resolve names for clients in separate namespaces after a corporate merger. In Address Manager, this zone type is often used with external servers, where the external server represents the authoritative primary. For instructions on how to create an external server, refer to Adding Other DNS Servers.
Recursion Used when creating a caching-only DNS server that accepts recursive queries, but doesn't host any zones. This role is available only at the view level. To use this role, you must also set Allow Query and Allow Query Cache DNS Deployment Options at the view level.
None Clears all data from the server to which it's applied.
Warning: If a primary DNS Deployment Role server interface changes, associated secondary DNS Deployment Roles must be updated accordingly. For example, if a Primary DNS Deployment Role is moved from one BlueCat DNS/DHCP Server to another BlueCat DNS/DHCP Server with a different services IP address, associated Secondary DNS Deployment Roles must be updated manually to use the new IP address for zone transfers.
Warning: If the published interface IP address associated with a primary DNS Deployment role is modified, the Address Manager server must be restarted before deploying to the primary and associated secondaries. Refer to KI-025343 on the Customer Care portal for instructions on restarting Address Manager. BlueCat recommends restarting the Address Manager server during a scheduled maintenance window in order to avoid service outages.