AIX & BIND versus Microsoft DNS

[Simon Waters]

Rhonda Gaines wrote:
> 
> I want to know what the pros/cons are of running DNS on Unix (not
> necessarily AIX but that's the platform it is on right now) versus
> Microsoft DNS.

Microsoft DNS needed to be clarified.

I'm reasonably happy when using Windows NT DNS with service pack
4 or higher.

I'm still rather skeptical of Windows 2000 DNS, which is a
completely different beast, and whilst a lot more sophisticated
(read probably more bugs than the previous) has only got to
service pack 2.

The Windows NT DNS server is horrible to diagnose as the event
log messages are totally useless, and Microsoft's solution is to
ship you a replacement binary which logs more information than
the original binary.

The Windows NT DNS does have a GUI management tool, which whilst
I moan about it's ability to crash, is an improvement of the GUI
management of BIND out of the box.

My preference is to run UNIX/Linux and BIND over NT DNS, but
since when you use WINS you don't have much choice, I've used
and recommended both. 

My preference partly driven by how much easier it is to secure,
and maintain a UNIX server. I know from experience it is
possible to build and run NT with high availability, but even
the need for several reboots just to install a copy of Microsoft
DNS server is off putting in some operational environments.

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