Google Cloud Platform in Action

Chapter 13. Cloud DNS: managed DNS hosting

This chapter covers

• An overview and history of the Domain Name System (DNS)
• How the Cloud DNS API works
• How Cloud DNS pricing is calculated
• An example of assigning DNS names to VMs at startup

DNS is a hierarchical distributed storage system that tracks the mapping of internet names (like www.google.com) to numerical addresses. In essence, DNS is the internet’s phone book, which as you can imagine is pretty large and rapidly changing. The system stores a set of “resource records,” which are the mappings from names to numbers, and splits these records across a hierarchy of “zones.” These zones provide a way to delegate responsibility for owning and updating subsets of records. For example, if you own ...