A Record or Hosts File on a Windows 2003 DNS Server

Question

I have a Windows 2003 DNS server that forwards on to OpenDNS. I want to set it up so that when someone requests dev.mydomain.com instead of requesting the IP from OpenDNS it returns a local IP address.

The reason I want to do this is because I have a local dev server called dev locally and dev.mydomain externally. I'd like it if I'm in the office and I type in dev.mydomain, I don't have to go through the internet, because I believe although I'm not sure that that is slower.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

You should be able to add an entry on your server's hosts file like this:

192.168.0.2 dev.mydomain.com

I don't know about Server 2003, but in Vista, the hosts file is in:

c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

You'll probably need to take off the read-only protection in order to modify it.

Answer 2

I found the solution. I created a forward lookup zone for dev.mydomain.com and created a blank a record pointing at the IP I wanted.