Windows Server 2008 GlobalNames Zone

Since before time began, administrators have always had the pleasure of Dealing with WINS (windows Internet Naming Service) for name resolution within Windows Domains. Now although WINS works, generally, when it has problems such as replication, they can soon become a headache, particularly when a great number of servers are involved.

With server 2008, and now in R2, a new DNS (Domain Names System) zone was introduces called GlobalNames. This has been introduced as a replacement (at your peril) for WINS for NetBIOS names stored in DNS. Now this Zone is static, and all entries have to be manually added, and are not updated by clients etc.

Recently we had an issue with a NetBIOS name resolving to different IP’s from different clients. Adding to the headache was that different client OS’s gave different results also. After some time investigating the oddity, I decided to have a look at implementing Global Names.