ESXi 5 hosts not registering with DNS

Essendon

Scratching my head on this one. Here's my lab:

Physical ESXi 5 U1 host. There are the following VM's on this host:

1. 2008 R2 domain controller, 10.0.0.2
2. vCenter server, 10.0.0.3
3. vMA, 10.0.0.50
4. 3 x ESXi 5 U1 hosts, 10.0.0.4 - 10.0.0.6, hostnames : esxi3.domain.local through to esxi5.domain.local. (The names are out of sync with the IP's, I know)

Okay now I added the 3 nested ESXi hosts to the domain without any issues. Installed vMA, joined it to the domain with no issues. When I try to add the 3 nested ESXi hosts as target servers to the vMA, I get the following error:

There's something screwed with DNS, somewhere. I have disabled the firewall on the nested hosts, to no avail. I have taken them off the domain, rejoined them but they still dont register in DNS. As a result, I cannot add them as targets to my vMA. One thing that I noted is I was able to add my vCenter server as a target to the vMA with no issues. There are no DNS records for the nested hosts on my DC. When I putty to my nested hosts, they cannot ping the FQDN's of any server, other than the DC and the vCenter server. The hosts can ping their own FQDN's and the IP addresses of the other hosts with no issues.

Thanks in advance.

MentholMoose

I don't think ESXi hosts can register the A and PTR records in DNS like a domain-joined Windows box. I suggest creating the DNS entries manually, or if the 2008 R2 box is the DHCP server you can configure it to register the entries in DNS on behalf of clients.

dave330i

MentholMoose wrote: »

I don't think ESXi hosts can register the A and PTR records in DNS like a domain-joined Windows box. I suggest creating the DNS entries manually, or if the 2008 R2 box is the DHCP server you can configure it to register the entries in DNS on behalf of clients.

What he said. I've always created DNS A record for my ESXi hosts.

scott28tt

MentholMoose wrote: »

I don't think ESXi hosts can register the A and PTR records in DNS like a domain-joined Windows box. I suggest creating the DNS entries manually, or if the 2008 R2 box is the DHCP server you can configure it to register the entries in DNS on behalf of clients.

Correct, ESXi doesn't register itself in DNS.

jibbajabba

It probably works if you join your host to the domain ..

Essendon

Thanks gents, I manually put the A records in and it worked like a charm. Always thought ESX hosts registered themselves in DNS, especially if AD was set to use secure and non-secure updates. Wrong!

Thanks again.