Preface

A Forward Lookup Zone is just part of the DNS server’s database that contains a list of domain names and their corresponding IP addresses. It helps the DNS server quickly look up the IP address for a website when someone types in its address.

When you browse the internet, you type in the website address (like www.google.com) in your web browser. But your computer doesn’t understand that address – it needs to know the IP address of the website’s web server to actually connect to it. So in the case of Google, The DNS server of google would hold a database for the domain google.com known as Forward Lookup Zone and that domain would have a www entry which will be mapped to an IP address (Web Server IP). This IP address will be returned to your browser which it will then use it reach the google webpage.

Learn more about DNS in my blog What is DNS?

Learn in detail about how DNS works on the internet Public DNS Infrastructure and What is DNS Trace?

It all starts with Server Manager

As we log in to the Windows Server, the first screen we will see of the Server Manager

To configure the Forward DNS Zone we should have DNS Service already installed and configured. In my previous blog, I have already explained how to install and configure DNS Server Install and Configure DNS Server on Windows Server. So we are ready.

Browse DNS to configure

This is the screen you will see

Right-click on Forward Lookup Zone and Select ‘New Zone..’

Go on…

Click on the ‘Next‘ Button

Choose Zone Types

There are different Zone types and the good news is that I have covered them in detail

Refer to my blog which covers in detail about Primary DNS Server and Secondary DNS Servers.

Public DNS Infrastructure and DNS Server types

Kindly note zone is formed on the servers. So Primary servers will hold the primary zone while the secondary servers will hold the secondary zone. So in a way, they represent the same thing.

Back to our configuration –

Select ‘Primary zone’ as the zone Type and hit ‘Next‘

Enter the Zone Name

This could be your local private DNS domain, In my case, I have selected my website’s domain.

Hit ‘Next‘

Create a Zone File

A Zone file is a text file that contains the DNS resource records for a particular DNS zone and is used by the DNS server software to resolve domain names to IP addresses. These record types are SOA, NS, A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, and TXT.

Learn more about record types on my blog – Types of DNS Records

This file can be used to move the existing records to a New Server the process is called Zone Transfer.

Back to our configuration –

We are creating a New Zone file whose name is automatically filled with our zone name appended with ‘.dns’ and hit ‘Next‘

Setting up Dynamic Update

Updating a zone in a large and ever-changing network could be a tedious task, hence instead of manually updating the zone record, the Dynamic update option can be enabled. In a dynamic update scenario, a DNS client or a DNS server sends an update request to the DNS server responsible for the zone.

The update request contains the new or modified DNS resource record that needs to be added or updated in the zone. The DNS server verifies the update request and applies the changes to the zone. This saves manual interventions and increases the consistency of DNS records.

However, dynamic updates also pose security risks since anyone who has access to the network can potentially make changes to the DNS zone. To mitigate these risks, it is important to implement appropriate security measures such as secure zone transfers, access control lists, and transaction signatures (TSIG) to authenticate update requests.

Back to our configuration –

We don’t want Dynamic Updates – hence select ‘Do not allow dynamic updates

and hit ‘Next’

We are all set

Our ‘zone’ thecloudblogger.com‘ is all set the moment you hit the ‘Finish’ button.

Zone is served hot

Our First zone is configured and ready.

Adding the first record in our new zone

As we can see there are 2 records already existing the SOA and Name-Server records. These records are automatically added by the DNS service itself after a zone is created.

To know more about SOA and NS records refer to my blog Public DNS Infrastructure and DNS Server types

Back to our configuration – Right-click on the newly created zone and add a new Host A record. Refer to my blog Types of DNS Records to know more about record types.

Add record details

Add the record Name and Ip address as specified below and click on the ‘Add Host‘ button.

There is an option to create an associated pointer(PTR) record.

A new record is added

As highlighted with an arrow one new host record can be seen. hit the ‘OK’ button.

Validation

Go to the CMD prompt of the server or your client machine if it is using our configured DNS server.

type nslookup www.thecloudblogger.com and it resolves correctly to IP address 1.1.1.1.

C:\Users\Admin>nslookup www.thecloudblogger.com
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  10.1.0.6

Name:    www.thecloudblogger.com
Address:  1.1.1.1