{"id":413,"date":"2022-07-16T14:01:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-16T02:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/?p=413"},"modified":"2022-07-16T14:01:51","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T02:01:51","slug":"why-arent-you-using-azure-dns-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/16\/why-arent-you-using-azure-dns-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Why aren&#8217;t you using Azure DNS yet?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The only answers to this question are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>I&#8217;m already using AWS Route 53 and it&#8217;s better!<\/li><li>I&#8217;m lazy and I like things to take time and cost more, so I pay for someone else to take days to make a change for me [yawhaaat?]<\/li><li>I use Cloudflare because someone gave me food and beer (and showed me dnsdumpster) at a sales pitch!<\/li><li>What is DNS?  In which case please follow this link &#8211; <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=funny+cat+videos\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=funny+cat+videos<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m starting off-topic (it does say Ramblings at the top of the screen after all) but stay with me! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">&#x1f603;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f603;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hiding your DNS might seem like a good idea<\/strong>; I have nothing against as long as it is free, but to me it is like changing RDP port 3389 to 4444 (not that you have RDP directly exposed to the internet of course &#8211; you have an RD Gateway!).  Sure, you&#8217;ve made it harder to identify an available target, but if someone is really after you they&#8217;ll have methods to get around this pretty quickly using port scans or other techniques.  You&#8217;ve also made it harder for people trying to help to work out what is going on.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The best thing you can do is hurry up on that cloud journey<\/strong> so you can offload concerns about external IP addresses exposing your on-premises entry points.  And as long as you are keeping those entry points secure and up to date, there shouldn&#8217;t be any major concern here anyway.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>If you are running RDS or Citrix services<\/strong>, generally these do not work well with SSL inspection or pre-authentication so are configured to pass-through directly to the entry point i.e. Cloudflare is providing minimal benefit here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Instead of being fancy pants <\/strong>and paying for these services to provide minimal benefit, let&#8217;s look at a great set up for minimal cost that let&#8217;s you easily add, remove or change DNS entries right in the portal you use everyday!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>First, make sure your entry points are secure:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Ideally, make sure you have a Web Application Firewall in front of web facing services.  This comes at a cost though, which some of us like to avoid if possible &#x1f61c;<\/li><li>Whether you do or not, review the ciphers available and remove them from least secure upwards until you work out the minimal and most secure configuration.  For Windows IIS, remove any ciphers you don&#8217;t need as described here: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/05\/have-you-secured-your-iis-web-server\/\">Secure your Web Server<\/a><\/li><li>Do you have an RD Gateway \/ Web server?  The same applies with IIS, and make sure you don&#8217;t allow &#8216;Domain Users&#8217; in the access policies.  Refine this to a group that contains only the users that need access.  I&#8217;m sure you can get by without &#8216;Administrator&#8217; being available to brute force hack from outside.<\/li><li>Geo-blocking &#8211; use it!  Most firewalls have some geo capability these days.  If your users are in New Zealand and Australia, restricting access to those regions only at the firewall provides a huge security benefit.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Right what was I actually posting about?  Ah yes &#8211; <strong>Azure DNS is easy to set up <\/strong>and costs literally a dollar and cents per month.  You don&#8217;t transfer your records to Azure though as they are not (and may never be) a registrar.  But no bother, once you&#8217;ve set up your records in Azure, you simply change the &#8216;nameserver&#8217; configuration with your existing provider.  I use Free Parking in New Zealand, a great low(ish) cost no-frills provider.  About $45\/year for a domain name and of course they have DNS management, but I&#8217;d rather do it in Azure so I after I configured the zone, I copied the four nameserver entries on the right:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1053\" height=\"193\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-5.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-5.png 1053w, https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-5-300x55.png 300w, https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-5-768x141.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1053px) 100vw, 1053px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;then changed my nameservers from Free Parking to Azure &#8211; there will be somewhere you can do this in your providers portal, or just log a request for them to do it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"716\" height=\"330\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-4.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-419\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-4.png 716w, https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-4-300x138.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Done!  Once the update is complete you are now serving and managing your DNS entries from the familiar Azure portal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is my Azure DNS zone cost&#8230; as you can see &#8211; cheap as cheeps mate!  Yes I&#8217;ll pay a whopping NZD$1.58\/month or $18.96\/year.  That&#8217;s only 5.42857 Steak &#8216;n&#8217; Cheese from Mrs. Miggins pie shop! &#x1f967;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"695\" height=\"284\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-416\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-3.png 695w, https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-3-300x123.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The console is intuitive and I love the fact I can manage my DNS easily and securely from within my Azure tenant.  I can also get some metrics about the DNS usage that I couldn&#8217;t get before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1313\" height=\"707\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-6.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-421\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-6.png 1313w, https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-6-300x162.png 300w, https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/image-6-768x414.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1313px) 100vw, 1313px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks Azure &#8211; you get better every day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TTFN!! &#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;&#x1f440;&#x1f37b;<\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div><p id=\"pvc_stats_413\" class=\"pvc_stats all  \" data-element-id=\"413\" style=\"\"><i class=\"pvc-stats-icon small\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" version=\"1.0\" viewBox=\"0 0 502 315\" preserveAspectRatio=\"xMidYMid meet\"><g transform=\"translate(0,332) scale(0.1,-0.1)\" fill=\"\" stroke=\"none\"><path d=\"M2394 3279 l-29 -30 -3 -207 c-2 -182 0 -211 15 -242 39 -76 157 -76 196 0 15 31 17 60 15 243 l-3 209 -33 29 c-26 23 -41 29 -80 29 -41 0 -53 -5 -78 -31z\"\/><path d=\"M3085 3251 c-45 -19 -58 -50 -96 -229 -47 -217 -49 -260 -13 -295 52 -53 146 -42 177 20 16 31 87 366 87 410 0 70 -86 122 -155 94z\"\/><path d=\"M1751 3234 c-13 -9 -29 -31 -37 -50 -12 -29 -10 -49 21 -204 19 -94 39 -189 45 -210 14 -50 54 -80 110 -80 34 0 48 6 76 34 21 21 34 44 34 59 0 14 -18 113 -40 219 -37 178 -43 195 -70 221 -36 32 -101 37 -139 11z\"\/><path d=\"M1163 3073 c-36 -7 -73 -59 -73 -102 0 -56 133 -378 171 -413 34 -32 83 -37 129 -13 70 36 67 87 -16 290 -86 209 -89 214 -129 231 -35 14 -42 15 -82 7z\"\/><path d=\"M3689 3066 c-15 -9 -33 -30 -42 -48 -48 -103 -147 -355 -147 -375 0 -98 131 -148 192 -74 13 15 57 108 97 206 80 196 84 226 37 273 -30 30 -99 39 -137 18z\"\/><path d=\"M583 2784 c-38 -19 -67 -74 -58 -113 9 -42 211 -354 242 -373 16 -10 45 -18 66 -18 51 0 107 52 107 100 0 39 -1 41 -124 234 -80 126 -108 162 -133 173 -41 17 -61 16 -100 -3z\"\/><path d=\"M4250 2784 c-14 -9 -74 -91 -133 -183 -95 -150 -107 -173 -107 -213 0 -55 33 -94 87 -104 67 -13 90 8 211 198 130 202 137 225 78 284 -27 27 -42 34 -72 34 -22 0 -50 -8 -64 -16z\"\/><path d=\"M2275 2693 c-553 -48 -1095 -270 -1585 -649 -135 -104 -459 -423 -483 -476 -23 -49 -22 -139 2 -186 73 -142 361 -457 571 -626 285 -228 642 -407 990 -497 242 -63 336 -73 660 -74 310 0 370 5 595 52 535 111 1045 392 1455 803 122 121 250 273 275 326 19 41 19 137 0 174 -41 79 -309 363 -465 492 -447 370 -946 591 -1479 653 -113 14 -422 18 -536 8z m395 -428 c171 -34 330 -124 456 -258 112 -119 167 -219 211 -378 27 -96 24 -300 -5 -401 -72 -255 -236 -447 -474 -557 -132 -62 -201 -76 -368 -76 -167 0 -236 14 -368 76 -213 98 -373 271 -451 485 -162 444 86 934 547 1084 153 49 292 57 452 25z m909 -232 c222 -123 408 -262 593 -441 76 -74 138 -139 138 -144 0 -16 -233 -242 -330 -319 -155 -123 -309 -223 -461 -299 l-81 -41 32 46 c18 26 49 83 70 128 143 306 141 649 -6 957 -25 52 -61 116 -79 142 l-34 47 45 -20 c26 -10 76 -36 113 -56z m-2057 25 c-40 -58 -105 -190 -130 -263 -110 -324 -59 -707 132 -981 25 -35 42 -64 37 -64 -19 0 -241 119 -326 174 -188 122 -406 314 -532 468 l-58 71 108 103 c185 178 428 349 672 473 66 33 121 60 123 61 2 0 -10 -19 -26 -42z\"\/><path d=\"M2375 1950 c-198 -44 -350 -190 -395 -379 -18 -76 -8 -221 19 -290 114 -284 457 -406 731 -260 98 52 188 154 231 260 27 69 37 214 19 290 -38 163 -166 304 -326 360 -67 23 -215 33 -279 19z\"\/><\/g><\/svg><\/i> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howdoiuseacomputer.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/page-views-count\/ajax-loader-2x.gif\" border=0 \/><\/p><div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The only answers to this question are: I&#8217;m already using AWS Route 53 and it&#8217;s better! I&#8217;m lazy and I like things to take time and cost more, so I pay for someone else to take days to make a change for me [yawhaaat?] I use Cloudflare because someone gave me food and beer (and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n<p id=\"pvc_stats_413\" class=\"pvc_stats all  \" data-element-id=\"413\" style=\"\"><i class=\"pvc-stats-icon small\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" version=\"1.0\" viewBox=\"0 0 502 315\" preserveAspectRatio=\"xMidYMid meet\"><g transform=\"translate(0,332) scale(0.1,-0.1)\" fill=\"\" stroke=\"none\"><path d=\"M2394 3279 l-29 -30 -3 -207 c-2 -182 0 -211 15 -242 39 -76 157 -76 196 0 15 31 17 60 15 243 l-3 209 -33 29 c-26 23 -41 29 -80 29 -41 0 -53 -5 -78 -31z\"\/><path d=\"M3085 3251 c-45 -19 -58 -50 -96 -229 -47 -217 -49 -260 -13 -295 52 -53 146 -42 177 20 16 31 87 366 87 410 0 70 -86 122 -155 94z\"\/><path d=\"M1751 3234 c-13 -9 -29 -31 -37 -50 -12 -29 -10 -49 21 -204 19 -94 39 -189 45 -210 14 -50 54 -80 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class=\"pvc_clear\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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