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I am confused between two DNS notions. My question is what is the difference between a "DNS zone" and a "DNS domain"?
thanks
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There are two types of zone files: A DNS Primary File which authoritatively describes a zone. A DNS Cache File which lists the contents of a DNS cache—this is only a copy of the authoritative DNS zone.
A DNS zone is used to host the DNS records for a particular domain. To start hosting your domain in Azure DNS, you need to create a DNS zone for that domain name. Each DNS record for your domain is then created inside this DNS zone.
Primary DNS servers contain all relevant resource records and handle DNS queries for a domain. By contrast, secondary DNS servers contain zone file copies that are read-only, meaning they cannot be modified.
As explained here:
Domain name servers store information about part of the domain name space called a zone. The name server is authoritative for a particular zone. A single name server can be authoritative for many zones.
Understanding the difference between a zone and a domain is sometimes confusing. A zone is simply a portion of a domain. For example, the Domain Microsoft.com may contain all of the data for Microsoft.com, Marketing.microsoft.com and Development.microsoft.com. However, the zone Microsoft.com contains only information for Microsoft.com and references to the authoritative name servers for the subdomains.
The zone Microsoft.com can contain the data for subdomains of Microsoft.com if they have not been delegated to another server. For example, Marketing.microsoft.com may manage its own delegated zone. Development.microsoft.com may be managed by the parent, Microsoft.com.
If there are no subdomains, then the zone and domain are essentially the same. In this case the zone contains all data for the domain.
More details are available here and here.
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