A file on a name server that contains information that defines the zone that the name server manages. The zone file is a text file consisting of a series of resource records that form the Domain Name System (DNS) database of the name server. These records identify which name server is responsible for a given zone, timing parameters for zone transfers between name servers, IP address to host name mappings for hosts within the domains over which the zone file is authoritative, and so on.
A typical zone file might look something like this:
; Database file microsoft.com.dns for microsoft.com.
zone.
@ IN SOA dns1.microsoft.com. admin.microsoft.com.(
12 ; serial number
3600 ; refresh
600 ; retry
86400 ; expire
3600 ) ; minimum TTL
; Zone NS records
@ IN NS dns1
@ IN NS dns2
; Zone A records
dns1 IN A 192.250.100.10
dns2 IN A 192.250.100.11
proxy1 IN A 192.250.100.101
fred IN A 192.250.100.102
wilma IN A 192.250.100.103
localhost IN A 127.0.0.1
www IN CNAME fred
ftp IN CNAME wilma
On Microsoft Windows NT–based and Windows 2000–based servers running the DNS Server services (and hence configured to operate as name servers for the network), the names of the zone files are similar to the names of the domains over which they have authority, but they have the .dns extension appended to them. For example, the zone file for the domain microsoft.com would be microsoft.com.dns and would be located in the directory \%SystemRoot%\System32\Dns.
A typical DNS server has at least three zone files:
Windows 2000 gives you the option of integrating DNS with Active Directory. This results in zone data being stored in Active Directory, which has advantages over traditional implementations of DNS in which zone data is stored in text files:
You should generally use the Windows NT administrative tool called DNS Manager to make changes to zone files on a DNS server running on Windows NT rather than modify these files directly by using a text editor such as Notepad. This will prevent errors from finding their way into the DNS database. Similarly, use the DNS console in Windows 2000 to administer the zone files instead of editing them directly.
See: