Howdy Everyone!
As I am setting up my infrastructure at home using docker I wanted to ask, is it better to have DNS, something like pi-hole, on my main docker swarm or would it be better to have it on a dedicated machine/docker host separate from the rest of my infrastructure?
Thanks for the input!
I have a quite rich selfhosted stack, and DNS is indeed part of it.
For such a critical piece of infrastructure I didn’t needed a container, just installed Unbound and did some setup for ad blocking and internal DNS rules.
Here my setup: https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=router:dhcp-dns
You could go with an independent pihole maybe, but that would double the chances of a hardware failure…
Using one device for everything might seem risky, but actually has less chances of failure ;)
AdGuard Home is a better choice than PiHole since it uses DNS-over-HTTPS by default. There’s also an app called AdGuardHome-Sync to sync settings between multiple instances.
I’d recommend running two DNS servers, and at least one of those separately from the rest of your infrastructure like on a Pi. That way, if you need to pull one of them offline, the internet still works.
You can accomplish the same with dnscrypt-proxy and Orbital Sync for Pi-Hole. You can also run a recursive DNS server using Unbound.
But why deal with separate software like dnscrypt-proxy when AdGuard Home has it built-in?
Why should I use a piece of software that’s controlled by a corporate entity in Russia?
I would say Pihole is a better choice than AdGuard home because PiHole just runs on top of dnsmasq. Throw Unbound on there too as your upstream recursive resolver and you’re set. You don’t even need to worry about an encrypted session to your upstream anymore because your upstream is now your loopback.
Throw Unbound on there too as your upstream recursive resolver
If you want to run your own recursive DNS server, why would you run two separate DNS servers?
You don’t even need to worry about an encrypted session to your upstream anymore because your upstream is now your loopback.
Your outbound queries will still be unencrypted, so your ISP can still log them and create an advertising profile based on them. One of the main points of DoH and DoT is to avoid that, so you’ll want them to be encrypted at least until they leave your ISP’s network.
If you want to run your own recursive DNS server, why would you run two separate DNS servers?
I’m not sure I understand your question. A recursive DNS server and a local DNS cache/forwarder/are two different things with two different purposes. You will always need both. You yourself are using AdguardHome and that is just connecting to recursive DNS server upstream. In my scenario you’re just running both yourself instead of you running one and then letting a 3rd party run the other for you.
Your outbound queries will still be unencrypted, so your ISP can still log them and create an advertising profile based on them.
You can encrypt the recursive queries through your ISP if you want to. Though the effectiveness of any profiling your ISP would do to you are minimized by Qname minimization that Unbound does by default.
If you’re just using DoH then you’re just shifting who’s making that advertising profile on you from your ISP to whoever is hosting your upstream recursive DNS server. It doesn’t matter how much encryption you do because on the other end of that encrypted connection is the entity who you’re giving all your queries to.
While we’re at the topic, which DNS do you guys usually use as upstream? On my router I think I set quad9 and cloudflare over TLS but sometimes I notice on new websites I need to refresh a couple of times until it works, might be DNS. Was too lazy to look into it since gaming and apps work without issues.
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/cloudflared/
I use this to translate DNS to DoH, and use cloudflare, and quad9 upstream.
environment:
- TUNNEL_DNS_UPSTREAM=https://1.1.1.1/dns-query,https://1.0.0.1/dns-query,https://9.9.9.9/dns-query,https://149.112.112.9/dns-query
Haven’t really noticed any DNS based lag.
Either is fine: the question is what happens when something breaks and if you care about issues and such.
If your docker host depends on the pihole it’s running, there can be some weirditry if it’s not available during boot and whatnot (or if it crashes, etc.).
…I ended up with a docker container of pihole and an actual pi as the secondary so that it’s nice and redundant.
Depending on the network’s setup, having Pihole fail or unavailable could leave the network completely broken until Pihole becomes available again. Configuring the network to have at least one backup DNS server is therefore extremely important.
I also recommend having redundant and/or highly available Pihole instances running on different hardware if possible. It may also be a good idea to have an additional external DNS server (eg: 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, 9.9.9.9, etc.) configured as a last resort backup in the event that all the Pihole instances are unavailable (or misconfigured).
have an additional external DNS server
While I agree with you that additional DNS server is without a question a good thing, on this you need to understand that if you set up two nameservers on your laptop (or whatever) they don’t have any preference. So, if you have a pihole as one nameserver and google on another you will occasionally see ads on things and your pihole gets overrided every now and then.
There’s multiple ways of solving this, but people often seem to have a misinformed idea that the first item on your dns server list would be preferred and that is very much not the case.
Personally I’m running a pihole for my network on a VM and if that’s down for a longer time then I’ll just switch DNS servers from DHCP and reboot my access points (as family hardware is 99% on wifi) and the rest of the family has working internet while I’m working to bring rest of the infrastructure back on line, but that’s just my scenario, yours will most likely be more or less different.
people often seem to have a misinformed idea that the first item on your dns server list would be preferred and that is very much not the case
I did not know that. TIL that I am people!
Do you know if it’s always this way? For example, you mentioned this is how it works for DNS on a laptop, but would it behave differently if DNS is configured at the network firewall/router? I tried searching for more info confirming this, but did not find information indicating how accurate this is.
I have 3 separate machines:
-
That fat home server with NAS and VM’s etc.
-
A Pi serving my smart home.
-
A plastic router with OpenWrt doing DNS and (I like to believe) some security, and giving WiFi to many small devices.
They all run 24/7 but I just don’t want everything to be dead and dark when one machine is down for whatever reason.
