There are lots of reasons to use Azure DNS. But I’ll explain my fave in a few moments.
What is Azure DNS?
You cannot buy DNS domains from Azure, but you can host your domains (delegation) there. For example, you can buy your domain on GoDaddy (or whatever), and then change the Name Server (NS) records of the domain from the registrar’s name servers to Azure’s name servers (4 of them). Once you set up the zone, (PowerShell or Azure Portal), your zone/records are stored in in the global network of Azure DNS servers.
When a DNS client does a lookup of your zone, DNS will use Anycast to find the closest available DNS server to resolve the name.
Availability
I’ve seen first-hand and remotely how local name servers having an outage can cause much bigger damage to Internet services than you might imagine. Having your DNS servers in one small area creates a possibility where DNS goes offline and your services, which are still online, cannot be found by clients.
By having your DNS records hosted around the world, you can avoid this issue.
Management
Once you’ve changed the Name Servers for your zone at the registrar, all of your DNS management is done in the Azure Portal or via PowerShell. DNS management in the Azure Portal is super-easy. The benefit is that Azure customers can reduce the number of tools that they need to use.
Automation
Imagine you need to automate changing or creating DNS records. Can you do that with your registrar? Azure DNS can be managed using PowerShell, which opens up some very interesting possibilities via Azure Automation.
Speed
By having your DNS records hosted all around the world (36 GA regions at the moment), your customers are going to be closer to your DNS servers, and therefore they can resolve your DNS names faster … and thus get to your service/content more quickly.
BTW, when you combine delegating the DNS for your Azure-hosted service to Azure DNS with a CDN such as Azure CDN then you should see massive improvements in the performance of your online services.
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If you found this information useful, then imagine what 2 days of training might mean to you. I’m delivering a 2-day course in Amsterdam on April 19-20, teaching newbies and experienced Azure admins about Azure Infrastructure. There’ll be lots of in-depth information, covering the foundations, best practices, troubleshooting, and advanced configurations. You can learn more here.
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