DNS Server - How to build it?

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pc-tecky

Active Member
May 1, 2013
202
26
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Will a DNS server help me with my 30 real and virtual devices and services?? If So How do I deploy or build it out?


Dedicated or shared IPMI :
S2600CP2J (IPMI key option)
A1SRI-2758F
X7DVL-E (either w/ add-on - have both styles w/ & w/o LAN port)
H8DME-2 (either w/ add-on - have both styles w/ & w/o LAN port)

EXSi-6.5u2
EXSi-5.5u2
Napp-It
FreeNAS

touch-pi (R-Pi w/ touch screen)
--VNC
pi-cluster (5x R-Pi cluster)
--VNC
--SSH
pi-router (WiFi access point via R-Pi)
--VNC
--SSH
pi-desktop (supports PXE booting of R-Pi 3Bs)
--SSH
--RDP

TFTP server (strangely SolarWinds only works on win7 so far, Firewall?)
--Cisco Hardware
--Raspberry Pi?
--Windows ???

Windows Server 20xx
--RDP
Windows 7
Windows XP (maybe)
Windows 2000 (maybe)
Windows NT 4.0 (maybe)

Linux
--VNC
 

fossxplorer

Active Member
Mar 17, 2016
554
97
28
Oslo, Norway
DNS server will provide you...domain name lookup services as vel as reverse lookups, no matter how many clients you have. The latter is a question about resources and scalability of the DNS server(s).

<< If So How do I deploy or build it out?
Well, you have multiple choices regarding the choice of the DNS server to use and how to deploy them. Are you going to deploy it on a Linux server?
I see many ARM SoCs in your client list, one option is to deploy it on one such SBC. I recently started to use Bind at home using an RK3328 SoC and i've been building Docker image for it if you are interested: fossxplorer/docker. Beware that it only supports aarch64/arm64v8 and is in beta atm :) The image is not yet pushed to any Docker registry, but planning to do so in the near future.
 
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EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
511
113
Pretty vague and lazy question.
Well, I saw one question and then a random list of stuff...

Building a local DNS server is a) typically very easy b) low on resource usage and c) can usually be added on as an afterthought to some other bit of existing kit - but you need to come up with some requirements first. What hardware do you currently have available? How many zones will you need to be serving? Does the DNS need to be AD-authenticated/integrated?

Most people can get by exceedingly well with setting up summat like dnsmasq to provide DNS+DHCP duties - it's very simple to set up and provides caching remote DNS plus local DNS name lookups. Personally I use samba DLZ with bind/named for most of my network which is considerably more work to set up but more flexible for complex setups, although I use dnsmasq for the guest network.
 
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BadTux

New Member
Jan 30, 2017
3
2
3
58
Thirty devices? Erm, yeah, probably.

Easiest way to set up a DNS server is with pfSense, either as a firewall or as a virtual machine. I have DNS set up on my pfSense router for internal DNS resolution, it both caches DNS lookups and uses my DNS servers in the cloud (which are running raw 'bind' software and hand-crafted zone files since 1999 on two different VPS providers for redundancy) for queries it doesn't resolve. That allows me, for one thing, to avoid my ISP's DNS servers, which are notoriously flaky plus leak information that I don't trust with them. (ISP name rhymes with "compost", sort of).
 
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