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Managing DNS conditional forwarders for your directory - Amazon Directory Service
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Managing DNS conditional forwarders for your directory

A conditional forwarder is a DNS setting you configure in Active Directory to route queries for a specific domain to a defined set of DNS servers. Conditional forwarders are required for Active Directory trusts and are also used to support private DNS domains. Each conditional forwarder consists of the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the remote domain and one or more DNS server IP addresses.

Note

On Amazon Managed Microsoft AD, a conditional forwarder is stored in Active Directory and replicated to every domain controller in the domain (its replication scope is Domain). If your directory uses Multi-Region replication (available with the Enterprise Edition), the conditional forwarder is also replicated automatically to every replicated Amazon Region. You create, update, or remove the conditional forwarder once, from any Region. The change then propagates to all Regions through native Active Directory replication.

You can run the following commands from Amazon CloudShell, which comes with the Amazon CLI and Amazon Tools for PowerShell pre-installed. Amazon CloudShell automatically configures your credentials.

  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console.

  2. Open Amazon CloudShell. To use the PowerShell commands, run pwsh.

List conditional forwarders on your directory

You can list conditional forwarders on your directory by using the Amazon CLI or PowerShell:

Amazon CLI
To list conditional forwarders on your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example value with your own:

    aws ds describe-conditional-forwarders \ --directory-id d-123456abcd

    For more information, see describe-conditional-forwarders in the Amazon CLI Command Reference.

PowerShell
To list conditional forwarders on your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example value with your own:

    Get-DSConditionalForwarder ` -DirectoryId d-123456abcd

    For more information, see Get-DSConditionalForwarder in the Amazon Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.

Create a conditional forwarder for your directory

You can create a conditional forwarder for your directory by using the Amazon CLI or PowerShell:

Amazon CLI
To create a conditional forwarder for your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example values with your own:

    aws ds create-conditional-forwarder \ --directory-id d-123456abcd \ --remote-domain-name company.example.com \ --dns-ip-addrs 10.0.0.20 10.0.0.21

    For more information, see create-conditional-forwarder in the Amazon CLI Command Reference.

PowerShell
To create a conditional forwarder for your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example values with your own:

    New-DSConditionalForwarder ` -DirectoryId d-123456abcd ` -RemoteDomainName company.example.com ` -DnsIpAddr 10.0.0.20,10.0.0.21

    For more information, see New-DSConditionalForwarder in the Amazon Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.

Update a conditional forwarder on your directory

To update the DNS servers for an existing conditional forwarder, use the same remote domain name with the new set of DNS server IP addresses. The new addresses overwrite the previous IP addresses. You can update a conditional forwarder by using the Amazon CLI or PowerShell:

Amazon CLI
To update a conditional forwarder on your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example values with your own:

    aws ds update-conditional-forwarder \ --directory-id d-123456abcd \ --remote-domain-name company.example.com \ --dns-ip-addrs 10.2.0.20 10.2.0.21

    For more information, see update-conditional-forwarder in the Amazon CLI Command Reference.

PowerShell
To update a conditional forwarder on your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example values with your own:

    Update-DSConditionalForwarder ` -DirectoryId d-123456abcd ` -RemoteDomainName company.example.com ` -DnsIpAddr 10.2.0.20,10.2.0.21

    For more information, see Update-DSConditionalForwarder in the Amazon Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.

Remove a conditional forwarder from your directory

You can remove a conditional forwarder from your directory by using the Amazon CLI or PowerShell:

Amazon CLI
To remove a conditional forwarder from your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example values with your own:

    aws ds delete-conditional-forwarder \ --directory-id d-123456abcd \ --remote-domain-name company.example.com

    For more information, see delete-conditional-forwarder in the Amazon CLI Command Reference.

PowerShell
To remove a conditional forwarder from your directory
  • Run the following command, replacing the example values with your own:

    Remove-DSConditionalForwarder ` -DirectoryId d-123456abcd ` -RemoteDomainName company.example.com

    For more information, see Remove-DSConditionalForwarder in the Amazon Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.