Google Cloud DNS is one of products of Google Cloud Platform (it's placed under Network products) that allows you to manage DNS records for your domain. Just to explain briefly, DNS stands for Domain Name System. To take excerpt from Wikipedia, article starts with "DNS is a hierarchical decentralized naming system for computers, services, or an resource connected to the Internet or a private network. In more simpler words, when you type url of some website in browser, computer knows to which IP address of the server it needs to connect in order to obtain data for the website. Good example is phonebook. Except for the name of the person you have webdomain or webpage and for phone number stands for IP address of the server. So every time you go to see some webpage, DNS server looks IP address of the server which is connected to the domain of that webpage.
There are different DNS records with which we can manage domain. Each record has it's purpose, some type of DNS records are:
There are many more. Important thing to emphasize is that, to lower load of DNS servers, DNS records are cached for certain time (which you can set with TTL parameter), so when some change is done, it can take some time to reflect.
Now, thruth is that you can manage your DNS records within your domain registrar account. It's also possible to have your own server and use it as DNS for your domain. So why would you use Google Cloud to manage DNS records for your domain?
Basically, if you have simple website, you don't have to necessarily use Google Cloud DNS, but if you have complex project that involves multiple domains, subdomains, it can be handy.
I recorded demo in which I did basic operations through Cloud Console
Here is step by step how to do similar things through gcloud command. What I'm gonna do (similar as in Youtube video):
Full reference for gcloud commands are here https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/dns/
lets start with basic command and that is current DNS settings for project:
all commands regarding DNS have format:
gcloud dns
To list zones (domains) in project:
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns managed-zones list Listed 0 items.
It displays zero zones since I didn't create any, lets do that:
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns managed-zones create mytestdomain --description "Testing managing DNS records" --dns-name mytestdomain.net Created [https://www.googleapis.com/dns/v1/projects/adventures-on-gcp/managedZones/mytestdomain]. NAME DNS_NAME DESCRIPTION mytestdomain mytestdomain.net. Testing managing DNS records
when I again list zones, I see newly created:
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns managed-zones list NAME DNS_NAME DESCRIPTION mytestdomain mytestdomain.net. Testing managing DNS records
one possibility is to use YAML file where are described actions to do like add or remove records. another way is to do operations one by one in command and then push changes. I'll do second way, here is list of commands which I executed in shell:
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns record-sets transaction start --zone mytestdomain Transaction started [transaction.yaml].
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns record-sets transaction add --zone mytestdomain --name mytestdomain.net --type A "104.154.92.142" --ttl 10 Record addition appended to transaction at [transaction.yaml].
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns record-sets transaction add --zone mytestdomain --name crm.mytestdomain.net --type A "104.197.69.8" --ttl 10 Record addition appended to transaction at [transaction.yaml].
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns record-sets transaction add --zone mytestdomain --name www.mytestdomain.net --type CNAME mytestdomain.net --ttl 10 Record addition appended to transaction at [transaction.yaml].
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns record-sets transaction execute --zone mytestdomain Executed transaction [transaction.yaml] for managed-zone [mytestdomain]. Created [https://www.googleapis.com/dns/v1/projects/adventures-on-gcp/managedZones/mytestdomain/changes/1]. ID START_TIME STATUS 1 2016-09-03T22:27:51.675Z pending
We start by starting transaction. What happens is that file transaction.yaml is created and there all actions are added. Until we execute transcation nothing really happens in the project with records.
As you can see mandatory parameters in command are:
When we look before executing transaction file, it looks like this:
---
additions:
- kind: dns#resourceRecordSet
name: mytestdomain.net.
rrdatas:
- ns-cloud-d1.googledomains.com. cloud-dns-hostmaster.google.com. 3 21600 3600 259200
300
ttl: 21600
type: SOA
- kind: dns#resourceRecordSet
name: mytestdomain.net.
rrdatas:
- 104.154.92.142
ttl: 10
type: A
- kind: dns#resourceRecordSet
name: crm.mytestdomain.net.
rrdatas:
- 104.197.69.8
ttl: 10
type: A
- kind: dns#resourceRecordSet
name: www.mytestdomain.net.
rrdatas:
- mytestdomain.net
ttl: 10
type: CNAME
deletions:
- kind: dns#resourceRecordSet
name: mytestdomain.net.
rrdatas:
- ns-cloud-d1.googledomains.com. cloud-dns-hostmaster.google.com. 2 21600 3600 259200
300
ttl: 21600
type: SOAWhen you execute transaction, file is deleted and we can see update in Cloud Console under Network -> Cloud DNS
To list records with gcloud, we use command:
zdenulo@linux:~> gcloud dns record-sets list --zone mytestdomain NAME TYPE TTL DATA mytestdomain.net. A 10 104.154.92.142 mytestdomain.net. NS 21600 ns-cloud-d1.googledomains.com.,ns-cloud-d2.googledomains.com.,ns-cloud-d3.googledomains.com.,ns-cloud-d4.googledomains.com. mytestdomain.net. SOA 21600 ns-cloud-d1.googledomains.com. cloud-dns-hostmaster.google.com. 2 21600 3600 259200 300 crm.mytestdomain.net. A 10 104.197.69.8 www.mytestdomain.net. CNAME 10 mytestdomain.net.