Microsoft Azure Integration

Azure DNS is a cloud DNS web service that routes end users’ requests to internet applications and resources by resolving domain names into IP addresses and IP addresses into domain names. In Azure, DNS records are organized into hosted zones, which are configured through the Azure API, Azure CLI, or Azure Resource Manager.

Universal DDI provides the capability for synchronizing and integrating public-hosted zones with Azure, and this allows users to view and manage Azure DNS data through the Infoblox Portal. Also, BloxOne NIOS-X Servers can be configured to service zones synchronized from Azure. For more information about Azure DNS, refer to the Azure DNS documentation.

The Infoblox Azure DNS integration feature offers the following:

Two-way synchronization of public-hosted zones and records between Azure and Universal DDI after the initial configuration and sync is complete. Synchronization of Azure DNS resource records configured with a simple routing policy is supported. Other routing policies are not supported. Synchronization of DNSSEC records is not supported.
One-way synchronization of private zones from Azure DNS to Universal DDI. The synchronized zones are read-only.
Viewing and management of Azure-NIOS-X hosted zones and records through the Infoblox Portal. For more information, see Limitations of Azure DNS Integration.
A NIOS-X Server can directly respond to DNS queries from clients for private zones that are managed in Azure. A NIOS-X Server can be configured as a secondary DNS server for local clients thereby reducing the network load since the queries do not need to recurse to Azure DNS.

The following diagram illustrates how to leverage the BloxOne Azure DNS integration feature. In an architecture that consists of on-premise networks and an Azure public cloud, NIOS-X Servers can be configured to service zones that have been synchronized from Azure. DNS data synchronized from Azure is transferred from the Infoblox Portal to NIOS-X Servers. DNS clients in the enterprise data center can then send queries for Azure DNS–integrated zones to the NIOS-X Servers.

To integrate Azure DNS with Universal DDI, complete the following steps:

Go to Configure > Administration > Credentials, and configure Azure credentials. For more information, see Creating Azure Credentials.
Go to Configure > Networking > Discovery > Cloud, and configure Azure. For more information, see Configuring Network Discovery.
Go to Configure > Networking > DNS > Zones > Edit Zone, and add an NIOS-X Server to Azure-synced zones. This step is optional. You can add a NIOS-X Server to a primary zone or a secondary zone. You can edit the primary zone or secondary zone and add the NIOS-X Server as an Authoritative DNS Server or add the NIOS-X Server to a DNS Server Group, and add the group to the primary zone or secondary zone. For more information, see Creating a Primary Zone or Creating a Secondary Zone.

All Azure DNS private zones are associated with a VNet in Azure. Each VNet represents a private network. It is quite possible that within one Azure tenant there are overlapping networks and zones between VNet. Therefore, to avoid conflict errors in Universal DDI, a new DNS view will be created for each VNet grouping that is synced. Zones with each VNet grouping will be added within the DNS view that is created for each respectively. It is expected that in most cases, the VNet grouping will consist of a single VNet. However, for the cases where a zone is assigned to multiple VNets, the grouping would include all VNets assigned to the zone. In this latter case, the vnet-view represents all VNets in the grouping.