Missing SOA record for AD integrated zone

Question

We are in the process of updating our Domain Controllers. We have 3 (now 2) Domain Controllers running server 2008 and 3 new Domain Controllers running Server 2012 R2. In DNS, we have 3 AD integrated zones. 1 of the zones is missing the SOA record on all
3 new DCs.
Before the record went missing, I first noticed an issue when attempting to demote one of the Server 2008 DCs.  I had received the following warning:
"This Active Directory domain controller appears to be the last DNS server for the following Active Directory-integrated zones:
zonename If you demote this domain controller, you may be unable to resolve any DNS names in these zones."
I found a TechNet article with someone in the same boat, and the solution was basically to ignore the warning.
Well I checked out the zone in question, and noticed that the SOA record on the 3 new DCs had an old version/serial number (25 on the new DCs, 126 on the old DCs).  This is a zone that rarely gets touched.  I did an increment serial number on one
of the old DCs and they were then all showing version 127 for their SOA record, so the replication was working.  The other odd thing about the SOA record is that on the OLD DCs, the record pointed to themselves, like they should.  But on the new
DCs, the SOA record pointed to other DCs, which they shouldn't be doing.  Well, whatever, I went ahead and completed demoting the 2008 DC I was working on.
After demotion completed, I attempted to fix the messed up SOA record on the new DCs.  First I tried changing the replication scope from all DNS servers on DCs in the domain to all DCs (Win 2000 compatible).  This didn't do anything for the SOA
record.  For my next attempt, I took one of the old DCs and removed the problem zone from AD, making it a standard primary zone.  Then I removed the AD-integrated version of the zone from another DC and waited for the zone removal to replicate. 
So now the only copy of the zone is a standard primary on 1 DC.  Then I switched the zone to AD integrated and waited for replication.  Sure enough the zone appeared on all DCs.  However, now on the 3 new DCs, the zone in question is now missing
the SOA record entirely.  On the old DCs, the SOA record looks fine.  When I open the zone properties on one of the new DCs and select the SOA tab, it just says "The data is not available."
So there we go.  3 DCs missing their SOA record for an AD integrated zone.  Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Well I found the source of the problem.  The zone giving me trouble has a CNAME record that's the same name as the zone itself.  For example, for the zone testZone.local there is a CNAME record called testZone.local that points to www.testZone.local.
 That way if someone types testZone.local into their browser, they end up at www.testZone.local.  After some research, I discovered that CNAME records cannot share the same name as any other record.  In my example, the CNAME record has the same
name as the SOA and NS records in the zone.  Although many DNS servers allow this practice, it is not a valid DNS configuration.
While this setup worked fine in our Server 2008 environment, it definitely causes problems in Server 2012 R2.  Somewhere between those 2 versions, Microsoft changed their DNS implementation.  So to avoid any issues with our zone, we just need to
configure it correctly!