Hopefully having read Sean’s post you will now know that Essentials changes your clients DNS Server address to a static IP, in order that it send Active Directory queries to the server, rather than to a router or external DNS server. Setting the IP of a client PC to statically query the Essentials server for DNS is one such problem. It’s a nice idea, however in practice these mystical office managers are few and far between, and because of that some of the hidden magic Essentials does, often causes more than a little confusion. Let’s also not forget that the deployment scenario of choice for Essentials, is for it to be purchased pre-installed on a piece of hardware, by a non technical office manager who then plugs it into their network with an Ethernet cable, the Essentials Server then does the rest. Hopefully reading that post will give you an idea of what Microsoft is trying to achieve with this process.

Probably the best title for a blog post ever right? Having seen and read about a lot of people struggling with DNS resolution problems with their clients on Essentials (2011/2012) networks, and also some dubious advice being given out for how to ‘resolve’ these problems i thought i would try and get into some deep level explanation of how, and why Essentials does what it does.įirst off, if you are struggling with this type of problem, you really need to check out Sean Daniel’s post from 2011.

Server essentials