Question : DNS Scavenging

I read an article on this and listened to my coworker and the results are conflicting.

We have scavenging turned on at the zone level. From what I read you need at least one DNS server (all zones integrated) with scanvenging also turned on  in order to actually scavenge anything.

Coworker says you only need scavenging at the zone level. Testing scavenging seems like it can take over a week and was pretty involved.

Does anybody know exactly what the steps are? If so I will have to run a script to find which one of our DCs if any have scavenging turned on at the server level.

Thanks

Answer : DNS Scavenging

Well not to worry :)

You have 3 settings to contend with.

1. Zone Properties / Aging

If you set this one you do not need to use 2 below. All 2 does is make this change for every single zone rather than individual zones.

2. Right-Click on Server \ Set Aging/Scavenging for all zones

Does 1 but for every zone rather than one zone at a time.

Both 1 and 2 are zone specific (eventually) and replicate to other DNS servers along with the zone information. Both allow the Scavenging Process to run against a zone, but they do not actually execute the Scavenging process itself.

3. Server Properties \ Advanced \ Enable automatic scavenging of stale records

This is the automated task, if you don't want the server to manage it you can run it on your own schedule (Scheduled Tasks and something like "dnscmd server /StartScavenging"). Or just run it by right clicking on the server and selecting Start Scavenging on occasion.

Either way the process will start it cleaning up any enabled zones when it's run. This only needs to run on one DNS server because cleaning the zone once is enough (records deleted by this process will replicate to other DCs).

Chris