DNS Management with Designate

This How-To describes how to create DNS zones and PTR records in the OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon).

📘 Disclaimer

With Designate, you can create and manage DNS zones (forward lookup) and PTR records (reverse lookup) directly through the OpenStack interface or via CLI.

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1. Create a DNS Zone

Using Horizon

1. In the left navigation menu, go to “DNS → Zones”.
2. Click “Create Zone”.

3. Fill in the following fields:

4. Domain Name — including the trailing dot (e.g. example.com.)

5. Description — optional description
6. Email — hostmaster address (e.g. hostmaster@example.com)
7. TTL (Time to Live) — e.g. 3600
8. Type — usually PRIMARY

Using CLI

openstack zone create --email hostmaster@example.com example.com.

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2. Create a PTR Record (Reverse DNS)

Using Horizon

1. In the left navigation menu, go to “DNS → PTR Records”.
2. Select the Floating IP for which you want to configure a PTR record and click “Set”.

3. Enter the following details:

4. Domain Name — including the trailing dot (e.g. example.com.)

5. Description — optional description
6. TTL (Time to Live) — e.g. 3600

Using CLI

# Get the UUID of the floating IP
openstack floating ip list

# Set the PTR record
openstack ptr record set <ZONE>:<UUID> <RECORD> --ttl <TTL>

# Example:
openstack ptr record set ch-zh1:d1460474-5129-4607-9f80-515f0c61234 example.com. --ttl 3600

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3. Register DNS Nameservers with Your Domain Registrar

For your DNS zones to be publicly accessible, the following nameservers must be configured with your domain registrar:

Region 1 (ch-zh1):
- dns1.ewcsdns.ch.
- dns2.ewcsdns.ch.
- dns3.ewcsdns.ch.

Region 2 (ch-ge1):
- dns1.ch-ge1.ewcsdns.ch.
- dns2.ch-ge1.ewcsdns.ch.
- dns3.ch-ge1.ewcsdns.ch.