Q: How do I set up networking for DNS resolution?

I think .local is based on Bonjour advertised services, not your DNS server.

You could try using "Bonjour Browser" to see what services are advertising on your local network

<http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/13388/bonjour-browser>

My experience with .local has been names with a "Single" period, such as "BobBookPro.local", not multiple periods.  But then again, my .local experience is limited to talking to my own Macs in my home or the local LAN subnet at work.

You said you put 2 local DNS servers into the network configuration.  Does that mean you have added the DNS servers to the physical network, or that you told the Mac what the 2 DNS servers were?  System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> DNS -> [+] ???

I do not run Mac OS X Server, so I have no personal experience.  However, I do not know why Mountain Lion vs Mavericks Mac OS X Server would be different.

If you are concerned, you could always install Mavericks on an external bootable disk, and then apply Mac OS X Server and test it before committing to Mavericks.

You might check out some of MrHoffman's web page (he is a frequently contributor to these forums).  He does a lot of work with Mac OS X Server

<http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1436>

and knows a great deal about DNS and DNS servers.

This is the chowder-headed default value that's arises from older Windows Server installations.   Microsoft fixed this in more recent versions.  Folks that didn't know DNS and that chose to take the default top-level domain from older Windows Server installations were led into a morass, unfortunately. 

You're basically going to have to run parallel DNS services until you can reconfigure those Windows Server DNS servers over into a valid top-level domain — when Microsoft specified this default of .local, .local was not a reserved top-level domain — or otherwise limp along here.   This because .local is a reserved domain now, as it's used for Bonjour/mDNS. 

The usual fix is to move into a real and registered domain, which is obviously a pain now, but only tends to get worse over time.

The usual workaround is to set up parallel DNS services, to add "local" to the list of search domains within network preferences (haven't tried this recently, but it was the old workaround for this case, see Mac OS X v10.4, 10.5, 10.6: How to look up ".local" hostnames via both Bonjour and standard DNS) and then incrementally migrate preferably to a real-and-registered domain over time, and/or to otherwise avoid using the .local domain where that's feasible. 

FWIW, rafmuseum.net is currently available for registration, and you can use a subdomain of one you already have — if one of those other existing registrations is associated with your organization — and there are a gazillion other new top-level domains now or coming online to choose from — though you can't have .local here, as that's RFC-reserved for Bonjour/mDNS activity.

RAFMuseum wrote:

 

OK well I am not going to be able to change the name of my Windows Domain. I have the Mountain Lion Server which is resolving the FQDN perfectly well, so how do I get my Macs (and there are only 3 with the possibility of a 4th soon) to talk to the OS X Server for DNS?

Set up the OS X Server DNS properly and compliant with the RFCs and preferably using a real and registered domain or subdomain, and incrementally remove or migrate the Windows Server configuration from its present invalid and non-compliant state over to an RFC-compliant and registered domain or subdomain.  Then aim the migrated clients and the newly-arrived clients at the DNS servers with the proper settings using either static configurations, using connections to a subnet or SSID with proper settings, or with manually-established local DHCP settings.