Maybe this is what your research had already discovered, but what you're looking for in this case is "I want to setup a DNS name for the machine on which this forum is being hosted."
You can absolutely do that and still keep your internal-only local machine. Yes, it would also be an inherent part of getting a public managed machine, too.
In the ideal, optimistic case you might already have a DNS system for the local network which is already allowing local machines to create local DNS entries for the machines that exist on the network. e.g. I could get to my machine right now with "EA117.local", because my machine does attempt to auto-update the DNS with it's name, and my DNS server actually allows this. Whether yours allows this is highly dependent on what's providing your DNS internally, whether your OS is configured to even attempt updating its DNS entry, etc. One way to learn whether this is already happening is to try running "ping -a xx.xx.xx.xx" from one of the machines you want to access the forum, to see if it already comes up with a name when attempting to reverse-resolve that static IP address you have for the host machine.
If whomever owns or manages you local internal IT also has a way to setup a manual internal-only DNS name for you (same as whomever already setup a static IP address for you to use), that would be a fine way to have an internal-only solution too.
Alternatively, and very commonly, you can instead just purchase a public DNS name from a public registrar. e.g. equineguyrules.com, or whatever appropriate name is available. Once you own the DNS name, using the control interface provided by the registrar you can create configure "equineguyrules.com" or "forum.equineguyrules.com" or whatever DNS name you want to return the IP address of your internal machine. If I tried to use your public DNS name, I couldn't get to the forum, because the DNS name resolves to an IP address which is only valid if I'm on your local internal network. But the other internal users, so long as they can resolve public DNS names, would resolve your DNS name to the IP address of that local internal machine.
Getting a public DNS name now, even though it's still for internal-only access at the moment, is probably what fits best with the future plan of possibly opening the firewall for inbound connections to access the machine publicly. But the easiest/quickest solution will be if your internal DNS already provides you a name.
You can absolutely do that and still keep your internal-only local machine. Yes, it would also be an inherent part of getting a public managed machine, too.
In the ideal, optimistic case you might already have a DNS system for the local network which is already allowing local machines to create local DNS entries for the machines that exist on the network. e.g. I could get to my machine right now with "EA117.local", because my machine does attempt to auto-update the DNS with it's name, and my DNS server actually allows this. Whether yours allows this is highly dependent on what's providing your DNS internally, whether your OS is configured to even attempt updating its DNS entry, etc. One way to learn whether this is already happening is to try running "ping -a xx.xx.xx.xx" from one of the machines you want to access the forum, to see if it already comes up with a name when attempting to reverse-resolve that static IP address you have for the host machine.
If whomever owns or manages you local internal IT also has a way to setup a manual internal-only DNS name for you (same as whomever already setup a static IP address for you to use), that would be a fine way to have an internal-only solution too.
Alternatively, and very commonly, you can instead just purchase a public DNS name from a public registrar. e.g. equineguyrules.com, or whatever appropriate name is available. Once you own the DNS name, using the control interface provided by the registrar you can create configure "equineguyrules.com" or "forum.equineguyrules.com" or whatever DNS name you want to return the IP address of your internal machine. If I tried to use your public DNS name, I couldn't get to the forum, because the DNS name resolves to an IP address which is only valid if I'm on your local internal network. But the other internal users, so long as they can resolve public DNS names, would resolve your DNS name to the IP address of that local internal machine.
Getting a public DNS name now, even though it's still for internal-only access at the moment, is probably what fits best with the future plan of possibly opening the firewall for inbound connections to access the machine publicly. But the easiest/quickest solution will be if your internal DNS already provides you a name.
Statistics: Posted by EA117 — Mon Jul 15, 2024 3:22 pm