Tutorial: Set up a domain by using Cloud DNS

This tutorial provides a walkthrough of the process for registering a domain, setting up a sample web server, and using Cloud DNS to point the domain URL to the server.

If you are new to using Terraform for Google Cloud, see Get started with Terraform.

Objectives

This tutorial demonstrates how to complete the following tasks:

  • Register a domain name by using Cloud Domains
  • Create a Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instance
  • Run a basic Apache web server
  • Set up your domain using Cloud DNS
  • Update name servers
  • Verify your setup

Costs

There is a cost associated with registering a domain name. For Cloud Domains pricing, see Cloud Domains pricing.

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  3. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Go to project selector

  5. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  6. Enable the Compute Engine API.

    Enable the API

Register a domain name

If you already have a registered domain, skip this section.

You can use Cloud Domains to register a domain. Cloud Domains lets you use the same billing account for your domain that you have created in the Before you begin section. For instructions about how to register a domain using Cloud Domains, see Register a domain.

Create a virtual machine instance

Console

To create a Linux virtual machine (VM) instance in Compute Engine, follow these instructions:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create an instance page.

    Go to Create an instance

  2. In the Boot disk section, click Change to begin configuring your boot disk.
  3. On the Public images tab, choose Debian GNU/Linux.
  4. Click Select.
  5. In the Firewall section, select Allow HTTP traffic.
  6. To create the VM, click Create.

Allow a short time for the instance to start. After the instance is ready, it is listed on the VM instances page with a green status icon.

Connect to your instance

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. In the list of virtual machine instances, click SSH in the row of the instance that you want to connect to.

    SSH button next to instance name.

You now have a terminal window for interacting with your Linux instance.

For details, see the Quickstart using a Linux VM.

Run a basic Apache web server

In this section, you run and test an Apache web server.

  1. From the SSH window, use the Debian package manager to install the apache2 package.

     sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install apache2 -y

    After installing Apache, the operating system automatically starts the Apache server.

  2. Overwrite the default web page for the Apache web server by using the following command:

     echo "<!doctype html><html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>" 
    
 | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

Test your server

Test that your instance is serving traffic on its external IP address.

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  2. In the External IP column, copy the external IP address for your instance.
  3. In a browser, navigate to http://[EXTERNAL_IP]. Don't use https to connect because the server will return a Connection Refused error.

You should now see the Hello World! page.

For further details, see Running a basic Apache web server.

Set up your domain using Cloud DNS

If you are migrating from an existing provider, you can import your existing zones to Cloud DNS. For instructions, see Export your DNS configuration from your existing provider. Otherwise, follow these steps to create a new public zone.

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create a DNS zone page.

    Go to Create a DNS zone

  2. For the Zone type, select Public.

  3. For the Zone name, enter my-new-zone.

  4. For the DNS name, enter a DNS name suffix for the zone by using a domain name that you registered (for example, example.com).

  5. For DNSSEC, ensure that the Off setting is selected.

  6. Click Create to create a zone populated with the NS and SOA records.

  7. To point your registered domain name to the IP address of the hosting server, you must add an A record to your zone:

    1. On the Zone details page, click Add Standard.
    2. Select A from the Resource Record Type menu.
    3. For IPv4 Address, enter the external IP address for your instance.
    4. Click Create to create the A record for your zone.

  8. Optional: Add a CNAME record to account for a prefix to your domain name (for example, www.):

    1. Click Add Standard.
    2. In the DNS Name field, add the prefix www for the domain.
    3. For Resource Record Type, choose CNAME.
    4. For Canonical name, enter the domain name, followed by a period (for example, example.com.).
    5. Click Create.

Update name servers

To update name servers in Cloud Domains, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud Domains page.

    Go to Cloud Domains

  2. Click the domain name that you want to edit. You can also click More next to the domain name to see the edit menu.

  3. To edit the DNS details, click Edit DNS details.

  4. Select Use Cloud DNS (Recommended).

  5. In the Cloud DNS zone list, select my-new-zone.

  6. Click Save.

Terraform

You can use Terraform resources to create a virtual machine (VM) instance, run an Apache Web server, set up your domain using Cloud DNS, and update name servers.

You can also use Terraform module to set up Cloud DNS with public, private, peering, or forwarding zones. For more information about zones, see the DNS zones overview.

# to setup a web-server

resource "random_id" "rnd" {
  byte_length = 4
}

resource "google_compute_instance" "default" {
  name         = "dns-compute-instance"
  machine_type = "g1-small"
  zone         = "us-central1-b"

  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "debian-cloud/debian-11"
    }
  }

  network_interface {
    network = "default"
    access_config {
      // Ephemeral public IP
    }
  }
  metadata_startup_script = <<-EOF
  sudo apt-get update && \
  sudo apt-get install apache2 -y && \
  echo "<!doctype html><html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>" > /var/www/html/index.html
  EOF
}

# to allow http traffic
resource "google_compute_firewall" "default" {
  name    = "allow-http-traffic"
  network = "default"
  allow {
    ports    = ["80"]
    protocol = "tcp"
  }
  source_ranges = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
}

# to create a DNS zone
resource "google_dns_managed_zone" "default" {
  name          = "example-zone-googlecloudexample"
  dns_name      = "example-${random_id.rnd.hex}.com."
  description   = "Example DNS zone"
  force_destroy = "true"
}

# to register web-server's ip address in DNS
resource "google_dns_record_set" "default" {
  name         = google_dns_managed_zone.default.dns_name
  managed_zone = google_dns_managed_zone.default.name
  type         = "A"
  ttl          = 300
  rrdatas = [
    google_compute_instance.default.network_interface[0].access_config[0].nat_ip
  ]
}

Verify your setup

To verify that your configuration is working, after the name servers are updated, navigate to your domain name (for example, example.com). The domain should resolve to your IP address and should point to the Compute Engine VM displaying the Hello World! page that you created in Run a basic Apache Web server.

To verify that your setup is correct, you can also run the dig +trace example.com command on your terminal window. Replace example.com with your registered domain name.

dig +trace example.com

The end of the output should include the following. IP_ADDRESS is your web server's IP address.

example.com.    300 IN  A   IP_ADDRESS
;; Received 62 bytes from 216.239.34.109#53(ns-cloud-d2.googledomains.com) in 62 ms

To verify that the changes are successful, run the following command:

example.com IN NS <your Cloud DNS name servers>

After waiting for DNS propagation to complete, you can also run the nslookup command to verify your setup:

nslookup example.com

The output should include the following. IP_ADDRESS is your web server's IP address.

Server:     127.0.0.1
Address:    127.0.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   example.com
Address: IP_ADDRESS

Clean up

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud DNS zones page.

    Go to Cloud DNS zones

  2. Click a zone name (for example, my-new-zone) to get to the Zone details page.

  3. Select the A and CNAME records that you created.

  4. Click Delete record sets.

  5. To delete the zone, click Delete zone for the zone name my-new-zone.

  6. Go to the VM instances page.

    Go to VM instances

  7. Select the instance that you want to delete.

  8. On the More menu in the row of the instance, click Delete.

What's next