Introduction

An important part of managing server configuration and infrastructure includes maintaining an easy way to look up network interfaces and IP addresses by name, by setting up a proper Domain Name System (DNS). Using fully qualified domain names (FQDNs), instead of IP addresses, to specify network addresses eases the configuration of services and applications, and increases the maintainability of configuration files. Setting up your own DNS for your private network is a great way to improve the management of your servers.

In this tutorial, we will go over how to set up an internal DNS server, using the BIND name server software (BIND9) on Ubuntu 14.04, that can be used by your Virtual Private Servers (VPS) to resolve private host names and private IP addresses. This provides a central way to manage your internal hostnames and private IP addresses, which is indispensable when your environment expands to more than a few hosts.

The CentOS version of this tutorial can be found here.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following:

• Some servers that are running in the same datacenter and have private networking enabled
• A new VPS to serve as the Primary DNS server, ns1
• Optional: A new VPS to serve as a Secondary DNS server, ns2
• Root access to all of the above (steps 1-4 here)

If you are unfamiliar with DNS concepts, it is recommended that you read at least the first three parts of our Introduction to Managing DNS. Continue reading How To Configure BIND as a Private Network DNS Server on Ubuntu 14.04 →