MSDNS Agent Backend¶

Setting up the Microsoft DNS server on Windows Server¶

The DNS Server role can be installed on the system by following the documentation available here: How to install the DNS Server role

Configuring MSDNS¶

Assuming the DNS Server role has been installed on the system, follow the next steps to complete the configuration.

These steps are for the Windows host which will run the designate agent. Make sure that Python 2.7 or Python 3.4 is installed on the system already.

To install Designate, clone the repository from https://github.com/openstack/designate and do a pip install. Example:

git clone https://github.com/openstack/designate
pip install .\\designate

After that, we need to configure the Designate Agent. Inside the github repository, there is a folder named “etc/designate” which can be used as default configuration.

Copy the folder somewhere else, for this example we will copy it to C:\etc\designate Inside the configuration folder, make a copy of designate.conf.sample and rename the copy to designate.conf Example:

copy C:\\etc\\designate\\designate.conf.sample C:\\etc\\designate\\designate.conf

Configure the “service.agent” and “backend.agent.msdns” sections in C:\etc\designate\designate.conf

Look in C:\etc\designate\designate.conf.example for more complete examples.

[service:agent]
backend_driver = msdns
# Place here the MiniDNS ipaddr and port (no the agent itself)
masters = <MiniDNS IP addr>:53

Ensure that “policy_file” under the [default] section is set:

policy_file = C:\\etc\\designate\\policy.json

Start the designate agent using (Python 2.7 was installed in the default location C:\Python27):

C:\\Python27\\Scripts\\designate-agent.exe --config-file 'C:\\etc\\designate\\designate.conf'

You should see log messages similar to:

2016-06-22 02:00:47.177 3436 INFO designate.backend.agent_backend.impl_msdns [-] Started msdns backend
2016-06-22 02:00:47.177 3436 INFO designate.service [-] _handle_tcp thread started
2016-06-22 02:00:47.177 3436 INFO designate.service [-] _handle_udp thread started

The following steps are for the system running the Designate controller.

Make sure to set the mDNS port to 53 in the [service:mdns] section. MS DNS does not support Masters that are on any port other than 53.

Create an agent pool:

# Fetch the existing pool(s) if needed or start from scratch
designate-manage pool generate_file --file /tmp/pool.yaml
# Edit the file (see below) and reload it as:
designate-manage pool update --file /tmp/pool.yaml

The “targets” section in pool.yaml should look like:

targets:
- description: Microsoft DNS agent
  masters:
  - host: <MiniDNS IP addr>
    port: 53
  options: {}
  options:
  - host: <Agent IP addr>
    port: 5358
  type: agent