Registering an internal servers DNS name with external registrar

glenimp617 · 2 Mar 2021 at 15:12

Quick question....I'm sure it's frowned upon to register a servers real name with an external public body.

am I right?

My third line engineer wants to do it

skyripper · 2 Mar 2021 at 15:28

The norm would be the other way round wouldn't it? Register a public name with public DNS, and add that to the machine.

Why would you want to publicize anything about internal machine names, IPs or whatever on the internet?

BongoHunter · 2 Mar 2021 at 15:36

Is this so you can generate a cert? You could always use an alias - nothing says you have to use the actual host name of the box

glenimp617 · 2 Mar 2021 at 16:59

We have a small collection of workgroup PCs on a vlan which gives them internet access only. Nothing on the lan. They use google dns.
The guys need to get those machines to talk to a server also on that vlan. It's hardcoded to the server name, so when they go to server1.contoso.com they are unable to resolve it.

The engineer says register it with our DNS hosting company, whereas I say edit the local host file. Think he just can't be arsed to go around all the machines.

I say small, it's about 120 machines.

Terrier_Jimlad · 2 Mar 2021 at 23:08

Most DNS providers wont even let you create records against non-routable addresses to fair - You mention the machines arent on a domain, but if the default local admin password is the same, you could write small batch file to edit the host file on them all, it'd take 10 mins tops to do it all.

BongoHunter · 2 Mar 2021 at 23:26

Something like this if the last post is correct: https://tomssl.com/a-better-way-to-add-and-remove-windows-hosts-file-entries/

visibleman · 3 Mar 2021 at 15:59

Internal DNS (on server or via routing appliance etc) for local resolves or HOST file would be the two obvious answers. Second what @Terrier_Jimlad says though; be surprised if a DNS provider will do what your engineer is proposing.