If DNS is in use at your site, HCP can be configured to use DNS services. To set this up, you need to specify a domain name for the HCP system in the DNS. The best practice is to do this before the HCP software is installed.
When HCP is configured to use DNS, clients can direct requests to the HCP system by using the system domain name, and HCP can distribute those requests among the nodes in the system. Without DNS, clients must direct requests to specific nodes by using the node IP addresses, which can create an imbalance in node activity.
The domain name for the HCP system should consist of a name for the system together with the name of the corporate domain (for example, hcp-ma.example.com, where hcp-ma is the system name and example.com is the corporate domain name). That is, HCP must be configured as a subdomain of the corporate domain.
The system domain name can contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens (-). It must consist of at least three segments, separated by periods (.). Each segment must be one through 63 characters long. The entire domain name, including the periods between segments, must be less than 128 characters long.
When installing the software for an HCP system, you need to specify the domain name for the HCP system. The installation program creates a domain with this name in HCP and associates that domain with the [hcp_system] network.
If you don’t use DNS, you still need to provide a domain name for the HCP system. Client requests can use this dummy domain name for access to the system if the node IP addresses are mapped to the dummy domain name in a hosts file. For more information about using a hosts file for this purpose, see Administering HCP.
For the HCP software installation, in addition to the domain name for the HCP system, you also need to know whether you want to use DNS with HCP and, if so, you need to know ALL of the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses that HCP needs to use to forward DNS requests to each of the upstream DNS servers.
An upstream DNS server is a DNS server to which HCP routes the outbound communications that it initiates (for example, for sending log messages to syslog servers or for replication purposes).
A downstream DNS server is a DNS server through which client requests are routed to HCP. The downstream and upstream DNS servers can be the same servers.
- To enable HCP to communicate with DNS, each DNS server must have at least one IPv4 or IPv6 address that is routable from the [hcp_system] network.
- You cannot use the domain name to access an HCP system until the HCP domain is configured in the DNS.
- HCP can use Windows Active Directory for user authentication only if the list of DNS server IP addresses includes the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses that HCP uses to communicate with at least one DNS server that can resolve the Active Directory domain name.
After the HCP system is running, you can use the System Management Console to create additional domains. For information about this and on configuring the HCP domain in the DNS, see Administering HCP.