DomainDnsZones and ForestDnsZones remaining after DNS server removal

[Ondrej Sevecek]

Please, would you be able to confirm authoritatively, that it is a correct
behavior, that when I have uninstalled DNS server from a DC, the DC still
have replicas of the two application partitions?

and would you confirm, that I can freely remove their replicas from such a
DC, please?

thank you very much.

ondra.

[Ace Fekay [Microsoft Certified Trainer]]

How did you confirm your findings? What tools did you use? Can you elaborate
please?

The application partitions are part of the AD database and is replicated
throughout the domain or forest, depending on if it is the DomainDnsZones
(each domain has one if it was created) or ForestDnsZones partition (if it
was created). It is not advised to delete them.

[Ondrej Sevecek]

after I uninstalled the DNS server from a DC, the partitions remained as
replica on that DC (according to ntdsutil). I have bridge-all-site-links
enabled, so there is probably no particular reason why the replicas should
remain on the DC regardles it was/was-not the last DC with such a replica or
not.

anyway, newly installed DNS server creates the partitions again as well as I
can certainly ask it to do manually.

[Joson Zhou]

Hi Ondra,

Thank you for posting in Newsgroup.

Uninstallation of the DNS service will not remove the application
partitions. You can remove the DC from the replica set for the application
partition by using the ntdsutil utility. The ntdsutil utility must be
opened and put into the "domain management" context. Then, you must connect
to a specific domain controller where you wish to perform the operations.
These actions are detailed in the following link:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc778798.aspx

Examples:

The commands to remove a server named "ServerA" as a replica of the
specified partition are:

remove nc replica dc=DomainDnsZones,dc=contoso,dc=com ServerA.contoso.com
remove nc replica dc=ForestDnsZones,dc=contoso,dc=com ServerA.contoso.com

You should then observe the absence of references to the two DNS partitions
on the target server when running "repadmin /showreps".


Note: Deleting the ForestDnsZones or DomainDnsZones application partition
is not supported
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/835397