A Windows System Admin's Blog

Covering Server Administration, Endpoint Management, Scripting and Network Management

Watch out when you enable DNS Scavenging and have a DirectAccess environment

,

So we had recently enabled DNS scavenging for a large environment who also had a DirectAccess server. The next day we were getting help desk calls about remote users not able to connect and those who were in the office unable to use their devices.

One of the cornerstones of DirectAccess is DNS and the Network Location Awareness this provides to the clients. We had to re-create the DNS records for DirectAccess manually on one of their DNS server.

  • directaccess-corpConnectivityHost which includes both A and AAAA records when deployed on IPv4-only networks. Basically the Loopback addresses for both IPv4 and IPv6.
  • directaccess-WebProbeHost this includes only A records and resolves to the IPv4 address assigned to the internal network interface of the DirectAccess server.
  • directaccess-NLS should point to the server hosting the Network Location Service, which should be Highly available.

So when building your DirectAccess infrastructure, always remember to set the DNS entries as Static.

One response to “Watch out when you enable DNS Scavenging and have a DirectAccess environment”

  1. Paul Harrington Avatar
    Paul Harrington

    Perfect! Just what I needed to fix DA after enabling DNS scavenging!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

More Posts

Update WSUS 3.0 SP2 to support Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 Clients

Just a quick one today.  Microsoft have released an update for those running WSUS 3.0 SP2 which allows you  to provide updates to clients running Windows 8 and Server 2012.  The update is available at this Knowledge Base Article for both 32 and 64 bit environments. Also, no word yet on when they will be releasing […]

Browsing to Companyweb May Fail with HTTP Error 503 on SBS 2011 Standard after installing an Exchange 2010 update rollup

I was recently updating a client’s SBS Server and after giving it a restart I wasn’t able to browse their SharePoint 2010 site. After having a quick look at IIS I could see the SharePoint Application pool was stopped, so I started it up and after about 10 seconds, it stopped. So I went and […]

Exchange Management Console not setting Permissions for Receive Connectors, fixing 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated issues with inbound e-mails

I was recently helping out on a migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. The organisation was moving from two servers, a front end and back end server to four with two Mailbox servers running in a DAG (Database Availability Group) configuration and two Client Access Servers in an array and along with Hub Transport […]