How To Add Host Overrides To Pfsense Dns Resolver Configuration

In this tutorial, you will acquire what Domain Overrides are and how they piece of work. You volition also learn well-nigh Host Overrides and how to set up these upwardly using the pfSense firewall. Domain overrides are an important feature when configuring DNS servers.

Table of Contents

• What are Domain Overrides
  • nslookup without Domain Override
  • nslookup with Domain Override
• Setting up Domain Overrides
• Host Overrides
• Wrapping up

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What are Domain Overrides

To put information technology in one sentence, Domain Overrides are used to configure specific DNS Servers for particular domains. For instance, let's presume the following setup:

• pfSense: 192.168.ane.i – DNS Server for your local network
• Windows Server: 172.16.0.10  // Advert Domain: mycompany.com

Now y'all want to forrad every request that goes to mycompany.com to the IP of your Windows Advertising Server with the IP of 172.16.0.10. If you would run this setup without a Domain Override and y'all want to look up a hostname residing in the domain like server.mycompany.com, you lot would become a Host server.mycompany.com not establish: 3 (NXDOMAIN) error.

I'll demonstrate it with an example of one of my own servers:

nslookup without Domain Override

Nslookup result without Domain Override

nslookup with Domain Override

Nslookup with Domain Override

As you tin can encounter, after setting the Domain Override pfSense frontwards the request to the Domain Proper name Server. So how to fix up a Domain Override?

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Setting upwardly Domain Overrides

It'southward child'due south play. Merely navigate to Services / DNS Resolver, ringlet all the way to the bottom and click on +Add underneath Domain Overrides. Now y'all got to enter your Domain Name and the IP Accost of your Domain Controller or DNS Server you want to forward your queries to. Click on Save and Utilize Changes.

Creating a Domain Override

If you did everything correctly, yous tin can verify your settings:

Verifying the settings

And that's all there is to information technology, easy, right?

Now, while we are at information technology, allow'due south also cover Host Overrides, you have probably seen the pick right above Domain Overrides already.

Host Overrides

Host Overrides are used to configure how a specific hostname is resolved past pfSense's DNS Resolver. One utilise-case would be split DNS, so you can resolve your Public DNS hostnames to private IP Addresses, and so you can eliminate the demand for NAT reflection.

Let'due south assume nosotros have a website hosted on another local network with the Subnet of 172.16.0.0/24. The website address is www.ourcompany.com and resolves to 172.16.0.200. Without NAT reflection, clients in our local 192.168.i.0/24 Subnet will not be able to reach the website. Then what we need to do is, we need to create a host override on our local 192.168.1.0/24 Subnet for www.ourcompany.com pointing to its IP Address of 172.xvi.0.200.

Let's visualize it to understand it better.

Navigate to Services / DNS Resolver and scroll down to the bottom. Underneath Host Overrides, click on +Add together.

Creating a Host Override

Wrapping up

Once you wrapped your head around it, it's pretty straightforward and easy to understand. Domain and Host Overrides are useful tools within pfSense, peculiarly if y'all run your firewall in a corporate environment. Are you using Domain and Host Overrides? Let me know in the comment section below.

Source: https://www.ceos3c.com/pfsense/pfsense-domain-overrides-explained/

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