Creating and using a CNAME record in DNS

Now that we are familiar with moving around a little bit inside the DNS management tool, we are going to create and test another type of record. This one is called a CNAME, and it is easiest to think of this one as an alias record. Rather than taking a DNS name and pointing it at an IP address as we do with a host record, with a CNAME we are going to take a DNS name and point it at another DNS name! Why would this be necessary? If you are hosting multiple services on a single server but want those services to be contacted by using different names, CNAME records can be your best friend.

Getting ready

We are going to make use of the same environment that we used to create our A records in the Creating an A or AAAA record in DNS recipe. There is a Domain Controller / DNS server online where we are going to create our records. Also running is WEB-01, a server where we are hosting a website as well as some file shares. We will also use a Windows 8 client...