Manage DNS in a Windows Environment by Using PowerShell

re: Manage DNS in a Windows Environment by Using PowerShell

Greg — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:49:51 GMT

Microsoft has an unreleased software utility called "DNS_Exporter_Application_V1.2" that does a great job of exporting and importing DNS entries, with user-supplied parameters like days to allow for "stale" calculations. Unfortunately, the tool is old and doesn't provide any command-line parameters so it can't be automated.

It supplies the following (info or examples in brackets)

Record Type (ie. "MicrosoftDNS_AType")

ContainerName (domain.name)

DnsServerName (server name)

DomainName (domain.name)

OwnerName (what registered it)

RecordData (IP address)

TextRepresentation (record data)

TimeStamp (epoch time)

TimeStamp (Friendly) (human readable time)

Static (T/F)

Stale (T/F)

TTL (time to live in seconds)

I have yet to find a way to emulate this with a Powershell query. Any suggestions? I've tried the user-supplied "DNSShell" module, but it doesn't have this functionality either. Thanks!

re: Manage DNS in a Windows Environment by Using PowerShell

Kayser Soze — Mon, 23 May 2011 00:11:13 GMT

I get "Access Denied" when using WMI with DNS on powershell. The DNS server is on a DC and since we don't want to run the script as a Domain Admin, WMI access is not allowed. How do you make this work so that only the required access to WMI is granted for the user to run the script against a DNS/DC?

re: Manage DNS in a Windows Environment by Using PowerShell

Matt — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 18:53:01 GMT

I get the following error when trying to run the function:

Exception calling "CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation" : "Generic failure "

At D:\Admin\ps\mwiest\DNS_RecordAdd.ps1:29 char:50

+ $rec.CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation <<<< ($server, $fzone, $text)

+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : WMIMethodException

Any ideas why?

Thanks.

re: Manage DNS in a Windows Environment by Using PowerShell

Richard.Siddaway — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:42:04 GMT

Hi Laurence

Thanks for the question. The function in the post essentially does this.

$server = "server02"

$fzone = 'manticore.org'

$text = "test27.manticore.org IN A 10.10.54.241"

$rec = [WmiClass]"\\$server\root\MicrosoftDNS:MicrosoftDNS_ResourceRecord"

$rec.CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation($server, $fzone, $text)

You are correct in that the documentation does show four arguments. The fourth is the output from the completion of the method. It isn't needed for the method to work. In fact if you try

$rec.CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation($server, $fzone, $text, $rout)

You will get an error that states

Cannot find an overload for "CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation" and the argument count: "4".

We can see how to use the output in this script

$server = "server02"

$fzone = 'manticore.org'

$text = "test27.manticore.org IN A 10.10.54.241"

$rec = [WmiClass]"\\$server\root\MicrosoftDNS:MicrosoftDNS_ResourceRecord"

$rr = $rec.CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation($server, $fzone, $text)

$rr.RR -split ","

We put the output into a variable and then take the RR property (a list divided by commas) and split it to make it readable. We get soemthing like this back

MicrosoftDNS_AType.RecordData="10.10.54.241"

RecordClass=1

DnsServerName="SERVER02.Manticore.org"

ContainerName="manticore.org"

DomainName="manticore.org"

OwnerName="test27.manticore.org"

In summary the fourth parameter in the documentation is the return information and we can ignore it if required.

re: Manage DNS in a Windows Environment by Using PowerShell

Laurence — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:09:56 GMT

How does this line work?

$rec.CreateInstanceFromTextRepresentation($server, $fzone, $text)

Isn't a fourth argument required? (msdn.microsoft.com/.../ms682714(v=VS.85).aspx)