Locally defined DNS hostnames

In some infrastructures, some domain name translations may not work correctly. To help with the issue, IAM appliance lets you define static DNS name to IP address translation. This change is then propagated to all Docker containers in the appliance. The definition is done centrally in the file /etc/hosts in the appliance operating system.

Record definition has two steps to add, create or remove a record.

  1. Edit the file /etc/hosts as desired.

  2. Run the command systemctl start iam-dns-reload which loads the change into the internal DNS server, thus giving access to it to each appliance service, including the OS.

The appliance operating system itself automatically uses /etc/hosts without the need to call internal DNS server reload. This can lead to situations when

  • the appliance OS correctly translates the record but other services do not

  • the appliance OS and services translate the record to different IP addresses

  • the appliance OS and services translate the record, eventhough it has been removed from /etc/hosts

If any of these situations occur, it is likely that the command systemctl start iam-dns-reload was not executed.