Pi-Hole is a network wide DNS sinkhole that can be setup on multiple software/hardware configurations. Originally, I was going down the path of setting up Pi-Hole on a Raspberry Pi 3, but decided to explore the Azure VM path based on some posts from others.
Below are the high level steps I followed to setup Pi-Hole on my home network.
1.Create a VM in Azure and keep track of the public IP. (I picked the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS version with 1 CPU and 1 GB of RAM.)
2. Create an inbound firewall rule to enable SSH traffic (i.e. TCP Port 22) from your home network
Home > Virtual machines > Connect to virtual machine > Networking
3. SSH to the VM and update the package database
sudo apt-get update
4. Install Pi-hole
curl -L https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
5. Configure Pi-hole for your environment. Some suggested configuration options are below[2]
6. Create an inbound firewall rule to enable Web traffic (i.e. TCP Port 80, 443) from your home network
8. Confirm you can access the Admin page of Pi-Hole by going to <VM IP>
9. Create an inbound firewall rule to enable DNS traffic (i.e. TCP/UDP Port 53)
10. Update your home router’s DNS to point to the public IP of your VM by following instructions at How do I configure my devices to use Pi-hole as their DNS server?
11. Test that Pi-Hole is properly configured by visiting the Pi-Hole Ad Pages Test Page.
[1] Post Implementation Notes:
- Under the VM, check Operations > Auto-shutdown to confirm the settings match the shutdown behavior of the VM you want
- Under the VM, check Operations > Update Management to confirm the settings match the OS automatic update behavior you want
[2] Related Links:
The following blogs posts were extremely helpful with the steps required to setup Pi-Hole in Azure and modifying some Pi-Hole settings to work for most home needs.
Sky-Hole Revisited [Pi-Hole in a cloud VM for easy DNS-based ad-blocking]
A New PiHole in the Sky
Network-wide blocking of Ads, tracking cookies and popups
