Implement and Configure Private DNS in Azure
Pluralsight Hands-On Lab — Networking
At a Glance
| Platform | Pluralsight |
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| Category | Azure Networking |
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| Lab Type | Guided + Challenge Mode |
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| Environment | Azure Portal, Windows VM via Remote Desktop, PowerShell |
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| Completed | 2026 |
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Overview
Azure Private DNS zones enable name resolution within a virtual network without exposing DNS records to the public internet. In this lab, I acted as a network engineer for Big Ben Corporation and configured a private DNS zone (bigbencorp.private), linked it to the lab virtual network with auto-registration enabled, created a manual A record for a server VM, and validated DNS resolution and connectivity from a user VM using nslookup and ping — confirming both auto-registered and manually created records resolved correctly to private IP addresses.
What I Did
- Created an Azure Private DNS zone named bigbencorp.private
- Linked the private DNS zone to the lab virtual network by creating a virtual network link (vnetlink) with auto-registration enabled, allowing VMs on the network to automatically register their A records
- Verified that auto-registered A records for both server-vm and user-vm appeared in the zone's recordsets after the link completed
- Created a manual A record named "server" pointing to the server VM's private IP address (10.0.1.4)
- Connected to user-vm via Remote Desktop and opened PowerShell
- Ran hostname to confirm the correct VM, then ran nslookup against the manually created record (server.bigbencorp.private) and confirmed it resolved to 10.0.1.4
- Ran nslookup against the auto-registered record (server-vm-xxxxx.bigbencorp.private) and confirmed it also resolved to 10.0.1.4
- Ran ping against server.bigbencorp.private and confirmed responses from 10.0.1.4, validating end-to-end private DNS resolution and connectivity
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