diff --git a/pkg/dns/dns.go b/pkg/dns/dns.go
index b65fe9fc55e..9e5c98d8758 100644
--- a/pkg/dns/dns.go
+++ b/pkg/dns/dns.go
@@ -648,7 +648,7 @@ func (kd *KubeDNS) getClusterZone() (string, error) {
 
 		// Select a node (arbitrarily the first node) that has `LabelZoneFailureDomain` set.
 		for _, nodeItem := range nodeList.Items {
-			if _, ok := nodeItem.Annotations[unversioned.LabelZoneFailureDomain]; !ok {
+			if _, ok := nodeItem.Labels[unversioned.LabelZoneFailureDomain]; !ok {
 				continue
 			}
 			// Make a copy of the node, don't rely on the loop variable.
@@ -663,7 +663,7 @@ func (kd *KubeDNS) getClusterZone() (string, error) {
 		return "", fmt.Errorf("Could not find any nodes")
 	}
 
-	zone, ok := node.Annotations[unversioned.LabelZoneFailureDomain]
+	zone, ok := node.Labels[unversioned.LabelZoneFailureDomain]
 	if !ok || zone == "" {
 		return "", fmt.Errorf("unknown cluster zone")
 	}
diff --git a/pkg/dns/dns_test.go b/pkg/dns/dns_test.go
index 061accf2f3d..3ea240c24cb 100644
--- a/pkg/dns/dns_test.go
+++ b/pkg/dns/dns_test.go
@@ -433,7 +433,7 @@ func newNodes() *kapi.NodeList {
 			{
 				ObjectMeta: kapi.ObjectMeta{
 					Name: "testnode-1",
-					Annotations: map[string]string{
+					Labels: map[string]string{
 						// Note: The zone name here is an arbitrary string and doesn't exactly follow the
 						// format used by the cloud providers to name their zones. But that shouldn't matter
 						// for these tests here.