Quickstart: Create an Azure private DNS zone using Azure PowerShell

This article walks you through the steps to create your first private DNS zone and record using Azure PowerShell.

A DNS zone is used to host the DNS records for a particular domain. To start hosting your domain in Azure DNS, you need to create a DNS zone for that domain name. Each DNS record for your domain is then created inside this DNS zone. To publish a private DNS zone to your virtual network, you specify the list of virtual networks that are allowed to resolve records within the zone. These are called linked virtual networks. When autoregistration is enabled, Azure DNS also updates the zone records whenever a virtual machine is created, changes its' IP address, or is deleted.

Prerequisites

If you don’t have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

If you prefer, you can complete this quickstart using Azure CLI.

Azure Cloud Shell

Azure hosts Azure Cloud Shell, an interactive shell environment that you can use through your browser. You can use either Bash or PowerShell with Cloud Shell to work with Azure services. You can use the Cloud Shell preinstalled commands to run the code in this article, without having to install anything on your local environment.

To start Azure Cloud Shell:

Option	Example/Link
Select Try It in the upper-right corner of a code or command block. Selecting Try It doesn't automatically copy the code or command to Cloud Shell.
Go to https://shell.azure.com, or select the Launch Cloud Shell button to open Cloud Shell in your browser.
Select the Cloud Shell button on the menu bar at the upper right in the Azure portal.

To use Azure Cloud Shell:

1. Start Cloud Shell.

2. Select the Copy button on a code block (or command block) to copy the code or command.

3. Paste the code or command into the Cloud Shell session by selecting Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows and Linux, or by selecting Cmd+Shift+V on macOS.

4. Select Enter to run the code or command.

Create the resource group

First, create a resource group to contain the DNS zone:

New-AzResourceGroup -name MyAzureResourceGroup -location "eastus"

Create a private DNS zone

A DNS zone is created by using the New-AzPrivateDnsZone cmdlet.

The following example creates a virtual network named myAzureVNet. Then it creates a DNS zone named private.contoso.com in the MyAzureResourceGroup resource group, links the DNS zone to the MyAzureVnet virtual network, and enables automatic registration.

Install-Module -Name Az.PrivateDns -force

$backendSubnet = New-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name backendSubnet -AddressPrefix "10.2.0.0/24"
$vnet = New-AzVirtualNetwork `
  -ResourceGroupName MyAzureResourceGroup `
  -Location eastus `
  -Name myAzureVNet `
  -AddressPrefix 10.2.0.0/16 `
  -Subnet $backendSubnet

$zone = New-AzPrivateDnsZone -Name private.contoso.com -ResourceGroupName MyAzureResourceGroup

$link = New-AzPrivateDnsVirtualNetworkLink -ZoneName private.contoso.com `
  -ResourceGroupName MyAzureResourceGroup -Name "mylink" `
  -VirtualNetworkId $vnet.id -EnableRegistration

If you want to create a zone just for name resolution (no automatic hostname registration), you can omit the -EnableRegistration parameter.

List DNS private zones

By omitting the zone name from Get-AzPrivateDnsZone, you can enumerate all zones in a resource group. This operation returns an array of zone objects.

$zones = Get-AzPrivateDnsZone -ResourceGroupName MyAzureResourceGroup
$zones

By omitting both the zone name and the resource group name from Get-AzPrivateDnsZone, you can enumerate all zones in the Azure subscription.

$zones = Get-AzPrivateDnsZone
$zones

Create the test virtual machines

Now, create two virtual machines so you can test your private DNS zone:

New-AzVm `
    -ResourceGroupName "myAzureResourceGroup" `
    -Name "myVM01" `
    -Location "East US" `
    -subnetname backendSubnet `
    -VirtualNetworkName "myAzureVnet" `
    -addressprefix 10.2.0.0/24 `
    -OpenPorts 3389

New-AzVm `
    -ResourceGroupName "myAzureResourceGroup" `
    -Name "myVM02" `
    -Location "East US" `
    -subnetname backendSubnet `
    -VirtualNetworkName "myAzureVnet" `
    -addressprefix 10.2.0.0/24 `
    -OpenPorts 3389

Creating a virtual machine will take a few minutes to complete.

Create an additional DNS record

You create record sets by using the New-AzPrivateDnsRecordSet cmdlet. The following example creates a record with the relative name db in the DNS Zone private.contoso.com, in resource group MyAzureResourceGroup. The fully qualified name of the record set is db.private.contoso.com. The record type is "A", with IP address "10.2.0.4", and the TTL is 3600 seconds.

New-AzPrivateDnsRecordSet -Name db -RecordType A -ZoneName private.contoso.com `
   -ResourceGroupName MyAzureResourceGroup -Ttl 3600 `
   -PrivateDnsRecords (New-AzPrivateDnsRecordConfig -IPv4Address "10.2.0.4")

View DNS records

To list the DNS records in your zone, run:

Get-AzPrivateDnsRecordSet -ZoneName private.contoso.com -ResourceGroupName MyAzureResourceGroup

Test the private zone

Now you can test the name resolution for your private.contoso.com private zone.

Configure VMs to allow inbound ICMP

You can use the ping command to test name resolution. So, configure the firewall on both virtual machines to allow inbound ICMP packets.

1. Connect to myVM01 using the username and password you used when creating the VM.

2. Open a Windows PowerShell window with administrator privileges.

3. Run the following command:

   New-NetFirewallRule –DisplayName "Allow ICMPv4-In" –Protocol ICMPv4
   

Repeat for myVM02.

Ping the VMs by name

1. From the myVM02 Windows PowerShell command prompt, ping myVM01 using the automatically registered host name:

   ping myVM01.private.contoso.com
   

   You should see an output that looks similar to what is shown below:

   PS C:\> ping myvm01.private.contoso.com
   
   Pinging myvm01.private.contoso.com [10.2.0.4] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
   
   Ping statistics for 10.2.0.4:
       Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
   Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
       Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 0ms
   PS C:\>
   

2. Now ping the db name you created previously:

   ping db.private.contoso.com
   

   You should see an output that looks similar to what is shown below:

   PS C:\> ping db.private.contoso.com
   
   Pinging db.private.contoso.com [10.2.0.4] with 32 bytes of data:
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
   Reply from 10.2.0.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
   
   Ping statistics for 10.2.0.4:
       Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
   Approximate round trip times in milliseconds:
       Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
   PS C:\>
   

Clean up resources

When no longer needed, delete the MyAzureResourceGroup resource group to delete the resources created in this article.

Remove-AzResourceGroup -Name MyAzureResourceGroup

Next steps