Azure – Configure an Azure VM for Dynamic DNS for Cloud Services

There are some "hidden" features of VN in Azure that will help you. First of all, yes, you are correct. If you create a Virtual Network, name resolution will not work unless you provide your own DNS Server and set it up to allow dynamic updates. You can't use public DNS Services to provide DNS name resolution for Windows Azure Virtual Network.

So here is your solution. You must start "Clean" because you cannot change DNS Server IP Address once VNet has running Virtual Machines in it.

• Create the VNet as usual (and its subnets)
• Provide DNS Server address. Set this address to be xxx.xxx.xxx.4 (4 will always be the first IP Address assigned in a given SubNet!) !
• On that clean VNet, Create a new VM with Windows Server. That VM will get xxx.xxx.xxx.4 IP Address
• Install and configure DNS Server Role on this machine
• DO NOT SET STATIC IP ADDRESS OF THIS MACHINE!
• Create rest of the VMs as usual

Things to be aware of:

• Never assign static IP Addresses to any VM in Windows Azure. They must have DHCP allocated IP Addresses
• Be careful to first create the DNS Machine, so that it get .4 IP Address
• Your DNS VM will preserve its IP Address (.4) as long as you do not DELETE it.

This architecture has proven to be valid and works within Windows Azure IaaS (a.k.a. Virtual Machines)

In Azure, your individual VMs exist in the context of a cloud service, so yes, you need to have a cloud service.

You can have one cloud service and all your VMs under it. Note that the DNS name (foo.cloudapp.net) and the Public IP address is tied to the cloud service and not the VM, so in case you want to have multiple IP addresses, for instance, you would need different cloud services for them.

A cloud service by itself does not incur any charge, so you can let your cloud service remain when you delete VMs. Note that you cannot have a cloud service with no VMs under it. When you go down to the last role in the cloud service you have to delete the cloud service itself; there is no option to delete the role and retain the empty shell of a cloud service. Note that this does not mean that to preserve your cloud service, you need to have a running role (which costs money). You can Shutdown your role with the StoppedDeallocated option which would allow you to retain your cloud service without being charged for having a role running under it.