As I mentioned earlier, Azure DNS now supports private domains that aren’t accessible over the internet. In the simplest scenario, you can use Azure DNS to set up a custom domain inside a single virtual network. One advantage of using Azure DNS to do this is that it will also automatically create a DNS record for each of the VMs and other resources in the virtual network so you don’t have to.

Before we can create a private zone, we need a virtual network, and in order to create a virtual network, we need a resource group, so I’ve included commands to do all of these tasks in the readme file in the GitHub repository for this course. The URL pointing to it is at the bottom of the overview below.

First, go into Cloud Shell. Then copy the command to create a resource group and paste it. Good, it says it succeeded. Now copy and paste the command to create a virtual network. It’s a little harder to find the status on this one, but it says it succeeded.

Let’s have a look at the next command before we run it. The first line is pretty straightforward. We’re creating a private DNS zone in the resource group we created earlier. Then we give the name, which is private.contoso.com. 

It succeeded. Now we need to create a link between the private DNS zone and the virtual network. We have to tell it which resource group to put it in and give the link a name. Then we tell it the name of the zone and the name of the VNet. Finally, we need to say whether autoregistration is enabled. If we set this to “true”, then any time a VM is created or deleted or changes its IP address, it’ll be recorded in the DNS zone. Okay, that worked. 

Now, to test the capabilities of the private zone, let’s provision a couple of VMs. Copy and paste these two commands. Highlight it so the last line has a space at the end. That way, it’ll run the second command as soon as the first one’s done. It’ll take a few minutes, so I’ll fast forward. OK, they’re ready.

To see if the DNS records that were automatically created, look up the zone in the portal. Type “private zones” in the search field. There it is. Now click on the zone we created. Great. It created a DNS record for each of the virtual machines.

Make sure you delete these two VMs so you don’t incur any additional charges. The easiest way to do that and to delete everything else you created, too, is to go to “Resource groups” and delete “MyAzureResourceGroup”.

That’s it for this lesson. In the next lesson, we’ll look at more complex scenarios.