Skip to Main Content
Snow Leopard™ Server
book

Snow Leopard™ Server

by Daniel Eran Dilger
November 2009
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
976 pages
22h 28m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Snow Leopard™ Server

Chapter 12. DNS Service

In This Chapter

  • Introduction to DNS

  • Planning DNS

  • DNS setup and

  • configuration

  • Managing and

  • monitoring DNS

Servers and client computers on a network use IP numbers to address and route the messages sent between them. DNS (Domain Name Service) is used to map those IP addresses (such as 10.0.1.2) to domain names (such as server.mycompany.com) as well as to provide a reverse lookup of hostnames for a given IP address.

While the primary purpose of DNS is to substitute IP address numbers with hostnames that are easier for humans to read and recall, Mac OS X Server and its applications also require a properly configured DNS infrastructure in place to function correctly.

Small organizations operating a single server or setting up their first Mac OS X Server can use the standard configuration to automatically set up DNS that relies on the ISP's existing DNS servers.

Note

For more on standard, workgroup, and advanced configuration, see Chapter 3.

However, many organizations might want to configure their own DNS, either because they can't use their ISP's DNS or because they choose not to because of factors such as wanting control over how DNS records changes, how updates are applied, or wanting to keep local DNS records exposed only within the company's private network and not shared publicly to the outside Internet.

This chapter briefly describes how DNS works, what's involved in planning the DNS, how the service is configured within Mac OS X Server, and how to maintain and monitor ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

John Rizzo
Windows Server® 2008 Active Directory® Resource Kit

Windows Server® 2008 Active Directory® Resource Kit

Conan Kezema Stan Riemer Mike Mulcare, Byron Wright, and Microsoft Active Directory

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470521311Purchase book