Setting up Google Cloud DNS for your domain

Cloud Hosting and Shared Hosting has a significant difference in performance. While Cloud hosting is dedicated for you, Shared Hosting will use a Server shared with multiple people resulting is performance issues. Discussing about differences between Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting is a topic for another day. This article will have a look on setting up Google Cloud DNS for your domain.

What is DNS?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and decentralized naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. It translates more readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. Simply a DNS or Nameservers maps device hostnames with their respective IP addresses.

By providing a worldwide, distributed directory service, the Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

Simply DNS or Nameservers maps device hostnames with their respective IP addresses.

How DNS work?

DNS is the Internet’s equivalent to a phone book. They maintain a directory of domain names and translate them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

For example, DNS is also similar to a telecommunication network. There are codes for Countries, States and identified Zones in addition to the telephone number dedicated to a user. Every user will have a unique telephone number and the telephone directory will server all required details to each user.

On the Internet, we use DNS in a similar way to identify each and every computer on the Internet to communicate with each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ltWoSi3OR8

What is Cloud DNS?

As we explained, DNS is a hierarchical distributed database that lets you store IP addresses and other data, and look them up by name. Cloud DNS lets you publish your zones and records in the DNS without the burden of managing your own DNS servers and software.
Pre-requisites for setting up Cloud DNS

Prerequisites to configure Cloud DNS

In this example, we will explore how to use cloud DNS to route a registered address to your GCP instance, particularly to a VM running a web server using your Domain name. We require that you :

  • own a Domain
  • have access to DNS records to manage settings.
  • have setup a GCP Instance / Virtual Machine in Google Cloud (GCP)
  • have access to alter GCP settings
  • have the external IPv4 address of the Virtual Machine

If you haven’t configured a Virtual Machine running a website or a web server; have a look into this article on deploying an Odoo ERP server quickly on Google Cloud using Bitnami application offering.

A Step-by-step guide to configuring Cloud DNS

Head to the Networking section in GCP. If you get an error as highlighted below; you haven’t selected a project.

Creating a Zone

Now click on Create Zone and input the appropriate zone and DNS names. The Zone name could be anything but should be unique.

Now click on Create Zone and input the appropriate zone and DNS names. The Zone name could be anything but should be unique.

The following screen will appear.

Refer below explanations to understand what to select to create a new Zone.

Zone Type

A private DNS zone contains DNS records that are only visible internally within your GCP network(s).

A public zone is visible to the internet.

Zone Name

Identifies a DNS zone for the project. Must be unique in the project.

DNS Name

The DNS name suffix of the zone

DNSSEC

The DNSSEC state of the zone. DNSSEC is a feature of the Domain Name System that authenticates responses to domain name lookups. It does not provide privacy protections for those lookups, but prevents attackers from manipulating or poisoning the responses to DNS requests.

Fill both Zone name and DNS name as per your Domain name. The example screen will be as follows.

Once you click the “Create” button Google will create the following details by default as shown below.

Adding “A” Record

Now add a new “A” record in the domain by clicking Add “recordset” button. The following screen will appear.

Refer below explanations to understand what to select to create a new “A” record.

DNS Name

The subdomain of the DNS zone

Resource Record Type

The resource record type. Here we will use an “A” Address record, which maps hostnames to their IPv4 address.

IPv4 Address

The host’s numeric IP address, in dotted-decimal format. This is the IP address of the Virtual Machine we will bind to the Domain name to resolve.

TTL

The resource record’s time to live, the amount of time it can be cached.

After adding the “A” record you can check the domain resolution by typing in your Odoo server’s domain name in the Browser address bar; which will redirect you to the Odoo ERP login Page.

Congratulation!!!

If you followed these steps correctly to map your domain to your own Virtual Machine, you will see the first page of your respective server.

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