The replication scope could not be set. For more information, see "DNS zone replication in Active Directory

When configuring the DNS zones to replicate to all domains in the forest, instead of all domains just in the current domain the following error was experianced:

"The replication scope could not be set. For more information, see "DNS zone replication in Active Directory" in Help and Support. The error was:

There was a server failure.

To understand where DNS is stored in Active Directory please see:

http://clintboessen.blogspot.com/2010/02/active-directory-dns-zone-locations.html

When trying to connect to the DNS Domain Partition Zone using ADSI Edit (following the above article) the following error was received:

Operation failed. Error code: 0x202b
A referral was returned from the server.

0000202B: RefErr: DSID-03100742, data 0, 1 access points
ref 1 : 'DomainDnsZones.domain.local'



It turned out that the partitions "DomainDNSZones" and "ForestDNSZones" were a lost cause. To fix this you need to perform the following steps:

1. use NTDSUtil to remove the replicas for both ForestDNSZone and DomainDNSZone. Wait for replication. Verify the changes took place then delete each of the partitions.

2. After the deletion has processed to all domain controllers, go into DNS Management and change the Zone to Forest Level/Domain Level. Active Directory will automatically recreate the partition within Active Directory. These new AD application partitions will automatically replicate to all DNS servers. These will then be accessible through ADSI Edit.

It may take over 30 minutes to get to synchronise the DNS zone around - AD is very slow when it comes to DNS.

After this no errors are showing up in the DNS or Active Directory event logs, diagnostics come back clean.