DNS Server

[stuart.mccollum]

Hi Guys,
I have been messing around with Lion Server over the past week or so and I have been reading a few articles and posts around setting my server up to manage my DNS. Just wanted to know a few things before doing it though.

Why is letting my Server manage my DNS better than my router?

Is there a walkthrough available on how to set it up?

My current Network setup for my server is like this:

IPv4 is Configured manually
IP address is 192.168.1.11
Subnet is 255.255.255.0
Router is 192.168.1.1
DNS Server is 127.0.0.1, 192.168.1.1

All my machines are setup the same with the IP being the only difference on each machine. I currently have OD running swell, but I am only testing it at the minute. I will also be registering a Domain name soon as I want to be able to access my server remotely via VPN and possibly host start using iCal Server as well.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

 

[mainstay]

I personally set the DNS in the AEBS to receive DNS from my ISP but point 1 of the servers to the mac server. This allows clients to use DHCP to get IP and DNS values. A system will check the local DNS server first when resolving a name, and if it fails, it will then check against the secondary DNS server (ISP or OpenDNS or Google DNS or ??? for internet lookups).


If you are hosting directly to the internet you will have to set your A records correctly in your DNS Zones such that the machine name resolves to your correct online IP.

I also setup DNS forwarders which point to my ISP's DNS servers.

The server will resolve all local names. Any values not found on the local server will be forwarded to the ISP. This is very important if we are using network access w/ Open Directory. If this is not set, usernames will not resolve against the OD when logging in from a workstation.

Hope this helps.