Overview

DNS Zone discovery retrieves the DNS Zone topology and records that belong to the zone. To transfer the zone, the machine performing the query should be included in a white list configured in the name server. This method requires a special DNS server configuration to permit Probe zone transfer.

The discovery mechanism triggers on a particular name server that records which zones should be reported, as follows:

1. Checks the zoneList parameter for the list of zones to transfer alias records.

2. Ignores zones with the name arpa, localhost, or '.' (root).

3. For each zone, transfers all records of type CNAME and A (second step). If the transfer fails, the zone is not reported.

4. Creates realization links.

For details, see DNS Zone by nslookup Job.

DNS Zone discovery is implemented in the following ways:

• The DNS Zone by nslookup job queries the DNS server for zone records from the Server itself. This method requires Shell access. For details, see How to Discover DNS Zone by nslookup

• The DNS Zone by DNS job queries the DNS server for zone records from the Data Flow Probe machine. This method requires a special DNS server configuration to permit Probe zone transfer. For details, see How to Discover DNS Zone by DNS

In the case where administrators do not want to add Shell access to DNS servers or read access to the configuration file, you can transfer zones specified in the mandatory zoneList adapter parameter. For details, see DNS Zone by nslookup Job.

These implementations retrieve the same topology and have a common discovery mechanism that differs only in the client type (Server or Probe).