CloudDNS | A free provider for hosting your DNS zones in cloud

For a very small website owners, or for bloggers owing their couple VMs (in cloud spaces) hosting their websites, it a usual need to have a DNS zone setup for external/public access to their resources.  Most folks adopt for domain name/hosting providers who also service the DNS name resolutions/redirections at an extra annual charge.  It all works fine.

Nut just for a one/two name resolutions do you really want to pay for a separate name resolution service? Particularly for single website owners it an overhead. Here comes the CloudDNS to make a relief.  On CloudDNS you can freely host upto 3 DNS zone that is served quickly across the world via their cloud DNS systems presence across the globe.

You can refer to their FREE service offering here: https://www.cloudns.net/premium/ 

Let me show what basic DNS entries you’d need for setting up a website that reaches your Web server.

1. You’ll buy/purchase a your domain name (say virtualblog.com) from the domain name registrars like GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, etc.,
2. During domain name registration, you’ll provide atleast two name servers which shall resolve any names or queries for your domain name on the internet.
3. As we are choosing CloudDNS as the name resolution provider, you’ll mention the CloudDNS Name Servers for your domain as shown below                    

NS1.CLOUDNS.NET
NS4.CLOUDNS.NET
NS3.CLOUDNS.NET
NS2.CLOUDNS.NET

Now, create a new DNS Zone for your domain say virtaulblog.com

Then you’ll be on your DNS zone file where you can create various types of DNS records.

To make your website with default www prefix, you’ll need to create your first DNS record of type “A” record that points to a host (your web server) as shown below. You need to be providing one of your external/public IP address which you’ll point to the internal IP address of your web server in your network firewall/load balancer.     

For that, you need to create a Web Redirect (WR) DNS record as shown below

Your DNS Zone records look like:      

You can also export your DNS Zone file

<

p>$TTL 3600
@    IN    SOA    ns1.cloudns.net. support.cloudns.net. 2014111304 7200 1800 1209600 3600
    3600    IN    NS    ns1.cloudns.net.
    3600    IN    NS    ns2.cloudns.net.
    3600    IN    NS    ns3.cloudns.net.
    3600    IN    NS    ns4.cloudns.net.
    3600    IN    A    109.201.133.168
    3600    IN    A    109.201.133.193
    3600    IN    AAAA    2a00:1768:1001:9::10
www    3600    IN    A    173.194.115.71