How to access website with public IP

Question

I'm new to the site, I have purchased my very first server for fun and personal use. What I have done so far is setup multiple VMs with Windows Server 2008 R2 setup to imitate multiple server setup. All of them have their own static internal ip :

• Webhost (IIS & PHP installed) - example: 1.2.3.1

• Database (MySQL installed) - example: 1.2.3.2

• Mail (Microsoft Exchange Server installed) - example: 1.2.3.3

• DNS & AD - example: 1.2.3.4

What I have:

• Purchased a few public static IP from my ISP

• Firewall

• Domain

• Port forwarded (80, 25, 443, etc)

I've been able to test my test website on localhost, however this is where I am getting confused. I am not sure how to access it with my public ip/domain name. I know I have to do something in the DNS Server or through my ISP, I've tried to look up tutorial, but they don't explain well enough for me to do it. If anyone could point me to the right direction I would greatly appreciate it.

Answer 1

Firstly do away with the purchased public IP's. Unless you are wanting people from outside your network to access the servers there is no need to do anything like that.

What you need to do is define a static IP on each of your VM's. Choose one to be your DNS server and configure your router DHCP so that it sets the DNS server to the DNS VM's ip address. Then in that DNS you can define whatever domain addressing you want (best practice is to keep away from the public routed domains like .com, .net, etc.

If you do want these VM's connected to from outside your own network then what you need is a router equipped with what's known as Network Address Translation (NAT) and what this does is convert the public IP address to a local IP address and route the connection that comes in on a particular public IP to the appropriate server based on private IP. This can be exceedingly difficult and is beyond the scope of webmastering and goes more into systems administration.