C H A P T E; Configuring Dns; Information About Dns Client; Name Servers - Cisco Nexus 3548 Configuration Manual

Configuring DNS

This chapter contains the following sections:
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Information About DNS Client

If your network devices require connectivity with devices in networks for which you do not control name
assignment, you can assign device names that uniquely identify your devices within the entire internetwork
using the domain name server (DNS). DNS uses a hierarchical scheme for establishing hostnames for network
nodes, which allows local control of the segments of the network through a client-server scheme. The DNS
system can locate a network device by translating the hostname of the device into its associated IP address.
On the Internet, a domain is a portion of the naming hierarchy tree that refers to general groupings of networks
based on the organization type or geography. Domain names are pieced together with periods (.) as the
delimiting characters. For example, Cisco is a commercial organization that the Internet identifies by a com
domain, so its domain name is cisco.com. A specific hostname in this domain, the File Transfer Protocol
(FTP) system, for example, is identified as ftp.cisco.com.

Name Servers

Name servers keep track of domain names and know the parts of the domain tree for which they have complete
information. A name server may also store information about other parts of the domain tree. To map domain
names to IP addresses in Cisco NX-OS, you must first identify the hostnames, then specify a name server,
and enable the DNS service.
Cisco NX-OS allows you to statically map IP addresses to domain names. You can also configure Cisco
NX-OS to use one or more domain name servers to find an IP address for a hostname.
Information About DNS Client , page 113
Prerequisites for DNS Clients, page 114
Licensing Requirements for DNS Clients, page 114
Default Settings for DNS Clients, page 114
Configuring DNS Clients, page 115
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