Edit

Quickstart: Create an Azure DNS zone and record using the Azure portal

  • Article
  • 3 minutes to read

You can configure Azure DNS to resolve host names in your public domain. For example, if you purchased the contoso.xyz domain name from a domain name registrar, you can configure Azure DNS to host the contoso.xyz domain and resolve www.contoso.xyz to the IP address of your web server or web app.

In this quickstart, you'll create a test domain, and then create an address record to resolve www to the IP address 10.10.10.10.

Diagram of DNS deployment environment using the Azure portal.

Important

All the names and IP addresses in this quickstart are examples that do not represent real-world scenarios.

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

For all portal steps, sign in to the Azure portal.

Prerequisites

Sign in to the Azure portal

Sign in to the Azure portal with your Azure account.

Create a DNS zone

A DNS zone contains the DNS entries for a domain. To start hosting your domain in Azure DNS, you create a DNS zone for that domain name.

To create the DNS zone:

  1. At upper left, select Create a resource, then Networking, and then DNS zone.

  2. On the Create DNS zone page, type or select the following values:

    • Name: Type contoso.xyz for this quickstart example. The DNS zone name can be any value that is not already configured on the Azure DNS servers. A real-world value would be a domain that you bought from a domain name registrar.
    • Resource group: Select Create new, enter MyResourceGroup, and select OK. The resource group name must be unique within the Azure subscription.

  3. Select Create.

    DNS zone

It may take a few minutes to create the zone.

Create a DNS record

You create DNS entries or records for your domain inside the DNS zone. Create a new address record or 'A' record to resolve a host name to an IPv4 address.

To create an 'A' record:

  1. In the Azure portal, under All resources, open the contoso.xyz DNS zone in the MyResourceGroup resource group. You can enter contoso.xyz in the Filter by name box to find it more easily.

  2. At the top of the DNS zone page, select + Record set.

  3. On the Add record set page, type or select the following values:

    • Name: Type www. The record name is the host name that you want to resolve to the specified IP address.
    • Type: Select A. 'A' records are the most common, but there are other record types for mail servers ('MX'), IP v6 addresses ('AAAA'), and so on.
    • TTL: Type 1. Time-to-live of the DNS request specifies how long DNS servers and clients can cache a response.
    • TTL unit: Select Hours. This is the time unit for the TTL value.
    • IP address: For this quickstart example, type 10.10.10.10. This value is the IP address the record name resolves to. In a real-world scenario, you would enter the public IP address for your web server.

Since this quickstart is just for quick testing purposes, there's no need to configure the Azure DNS name servers at a domain name registrar. With a real production domain, you'll want anyone on the Internet to resolve the host name to connect to your web server or app. You'll visit your domain name registrar to replace the name server records with the Azure DNS name servers. For more information, see Tutorial: Host your domain in Azure DNS.

Test the name resolution

Now that you have a test DNS zone with a test 'A' record, you can test the name resolution with a tool called nslookup.

To test DNS name resolution:

  1. In the Azure portal, under All resources, open the contoso.xyz DNS zone in the MyResourceGroup resource group. You can enter contoso.xyz in the Filter by name box to find it more easily.

  2. Copy one of the name server names from the name server list on the Overview page.

    zone

  3. Open a command prompt, and run the following command:

    nslookup www.contoso.xyz <name server name>

    For example:

    nslookup www.contoso.xyz ns1-08.azure-dns.com.

    You should see something like the following screen:

    Screenshot shows a command prompt window with an n s lookup command and values for Server, Address, Name, and Address.

The host name www.contoso.xyz resolves to 10.10.10.10, just as you configured it. This result verifies that name resolution is working correctly.

Clean up resources

When you no longer need the resources you created in this quickstart, remove them by deleting the MyResourceGroup resource group. Open the MyResourceGroup resource group, and select Delete resource group.

Next steps

Create DNS records for a web app in a custom domain