Network Registrar Help

Close Window

The host administrator role applies to administrators of DNS records who want to update DNS name and IP address information for devices on their network. Host administrators only spend a small fraction of their time on host administration. Hence, they require a simple interface for updating DNS resource records. It is not appropriate for host administrators to know the details of DNS administration, as is the case with zone administrators.

The host administrator role assumes that a more experienced DNS administrator configured the zones that the host administrator indirectly works with by being assigned a host-admin constrained role. The more experienced zone administrator will use a ccm-admin role to define the host administrator's roles by specifying which zones and which address ranges a host administrator can work with. The experienced DNS administrator also uses either a zone-admin constrained role, the GUI, or the CLI to configure the DNS server and zones. See the Zone Administration help for more information on zone administration.

The use of the host concept, which corresponds to a specific machine that can have a name and an address (and for advanced users, other DNS resource records), simplifies the administrator's mapping of the real world into the user interface concepts.

The most common operations performed by the host administrator are associated with significant events involving computer hardware -- a new computer arrives, changes locations and thus its IP address, or changes owners and thus its name. As part of these events, the DNS information for that computer needs to be updated.

The global administrator can restrict which zones the host administrator can manage.

The host-admin role can be constrained by a list of zones. Only hosts within one of the allowed zones can be viewed, added, modified, or deleted.

The host-admin role can be further constrained by direct or indirect specification of which IP addresses can be assigned to hosts. The address constraints can be as specific as allowing the administrator to enter an IP address or by explicit list of IP address ranges.

When global administrators set up host-admin role, they can decide whether to constrain the role to creating host names that comply with a regular expression.

• List zones to which to add hosts
• Add a host
• Edit a host

This page lists the zones created by the zone administrator or the Web UI administrator, and is available to the host-admin. This page appears only if you have more than one zone to manage. The zones are listed in the order they were created.

This page lists the hosts for a zone, and lets you add, edit, and delete these hosts, unless you are a read-only administrator. You can only add the hosts for the zones you can manage and the address ranges that are assigned to you. Adding a host involves creating an Address (A) and Pointer (PTR) record for the host in the zone, which you can do in one action.

• To add a host, enter the host name and the IP address in the Hostname and IP Address fields. Create PTR Records? is check marked by default so that you can create a reverse address record for the host, as long as the reverse zone exists for the subnet containing the host.

  The Valid IP Ranges drop-down list shows all the valid address ranges for which you are set up in the zone, if you are constrained. If you are unconstrained, it is indicated as such and there is no drop-down choice. Use the IP range or ranges as a point of reference for when you enter the host address in the IP Address field, to confirm that the host address falls into the range.

• To add the host name and IP address, click Add Host. This adds the host with a single IP address to the list below the fields.

• To edit a host, click the host name in the list. This opens the Edit Host page.

• To delete a host, click the Delete icon () next to the host name in the list. This opens a Confirm Delete page.

This page also lets you search for hosts, navigate through the list, and change the display size.

When you click a host name on the List/Add Hosts for Zone page, you can change the host attributes on the Edit Host page, unless you are a read-only administrator.

Modify the following fields:

Field	Description
Name	You cannot edit this field.
addresses	Add more IP addresses, based on the valid IP ranges shown on the right side of the page, or delete existing ones. Add each additional IP address by entering its host address and clicking Add IP Address. If you need to delete an unwanted address, click the Delete icon () next to the IP address. Note that this page lets you retain a host without an IP address, although no A record is created for it.
Create PTR Records?	Decide if you want to create reverse pointer (PTR) resource records for each of the host addresses. The default is true.

When done with the modification, click Modify Host, or click Cancel to cancel the operation.