Introduction

DNS, or the Domain Name System, is often a difficult component to get right when learning how to configure websites and servers. While most people will probably choose to use the DNS servers provided by their hosting company or their domain registrar, there are some advantages to creating your own DNS servers.

In this guide, we will discuss how to install and configure the Bind9 DNS server as authoritative-only DNS servers on Ubuntu 14.04 machines. We will set these up two Bind servers for our domain in a master-slave configuration.

Prerequisites and Goals

To complete this guide, you will first need to be familiar with some common DNS terminology. Check out this guide to learn about the concepts we will be implementing in this guide.

You will also need at least two servers. One will be for the “master” DNS server where the zone files for our domain will originate and one will be the “slave” server which will receive the zone data through transfers and be available in the event that the other server goes down. This avoids the peril of having a single point of failure for your DNS servers. Continue reading How To Configure Bind as an Authoritative-Only DNS Server on Ubuntu 14.04 →