Quickstart

This quickstart creates a zone and a load-balanced, health-checked A record. DTM can be driven three ways and the result is identical; pick the path that fits how you work.

You will need a deployed cluster and its API endpoint (for example https://dtm.internal:8443). See Deploy if you have not deployed yet, including how to retrieve the initial admin password. For evaluation, a single node is the smallest footprint and is plenty for this quickstart:

Choose your path

• Web UI - point-and-click in the browser. No token needed; just log in. Skip straight to Create a zone.
• REST API - scriptable HTTP. Needs an API token (next step).
• Terraform - declarative and version-controlled. Needs an API token (next step), plus the provider setup.

Every step below has a tab for each path, so you only need to follow your own.

Tip

Web UI users can also sign in with Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on, using their organization’s identity instead of the local admin account. See Entra ID SSO.

1. Get a token (REST API and Terraform only)

Note

Using the web UI? Skip this step. A token is only needed for the REST API or the Terraform provider.

The REST API and Terraform provider authenticate with a JWT bearer token. Logging in sets the token as an HttpOnly dtm_token cookie (via Set-Cookie); capture it from the response headers and pass it as a bearer token on subsequent calls:

export DTM_ENDPOINT="https://dtm.internal:8443"
export DTM_TOKEN=$(curl -sk -X POST "$DTM_ENDPOINT/api/v1/auth/login" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username": "admin", "password": "<your-password>"}' \
  -D - -o /dev/null | grep -i '^set-cookie: dtm_token=' \
  | sed -E 's/.*dtm_token=([^;]+).*/\1/')

2. Create a zone

A zone is a DNS namespace DTM answers authoritatively (for example example.internal.). Note the trailing dot.

Web UI

1. Go to Zones → Create Zone.
2. Enter the zone name example.internal. and a default TTL (for example 300).
3. Save. The zone is created active and starts serving immediately; it reaches the rest of the cluster within moments.

REST API

curl -sk -X POST "$DTM_ENDPOINT/api/v1/zones" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DTM_TOKEN" \
  -H "X-DTM-CSRF: 1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "example.internal.", "default_ttl": 300}'

Terraform

resource "dtm_zone" "example" {
  name        = "example.internal."
  default_ttl = 300
}

3. Add a load-balanced, health-checked record

This creates web.example.internal pointing at two backends, round-robin between the healthy ones, with an HTTP health check.

Web UI

1. Open the zone and choose Add Record.
2. Set Name web, Type A, TTL 60.
3. Add two values: 10.0.1.10 and 10.0.1.11.
4. Under Load balancing, choose round-robin.
5. Under Health check, choose HTTP, port 80, path /healthz.
6. Save.

REST API

curl -sk -X POST "$DTM_ENDPOINT/api/v1/zones/<zone-id>/records" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DTM_TOKEN" \
  -H "X-DTM-CSRF: 1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "web",
    "type": "A",
    "ttl": 60,
    "values": [{"value": "10.0.1.10"}, {"value": "10.0.1.11"}],
    "lb_policy": {"method": "round-robin"},
    "health_check_template": {
      "protocol": "http", "port": 80, "path": "/healthz",
      "interval_seconds": 15, "timeout_seconds": 5
    }
  }'

Terraform

resource "dtm_record" "web" {
  zone_id = dtm_zone.example.id
  name    = "web"
  type    = "A"
  ttl     = 60

  values { value = "10.0.1.10" }
  values { value = "10.0.1.11" }

  lb_policy {
    method = "round-robin"
  }

  health_check_template {
    protocol         = "http"
    port             = 80
    path             = "/healthz"
    interval_seconds = 15
    timeout_seconds  = 5
  }
}

Run terraform apply (see provider setup for the provider block).

4. Verify

Query the record. DTM returns only healthy backends, one per query under round-robin:

dig @dtm.internal web.example.internal +short

If a backend fails its health check, it is dropped from the answer once it crosses the failure threshold (under a minute with the 15 second interval above) and traffic shifts to the remaining healthy values.

Where to go next

• Load-balancing methods: choose the right policy for your workload.
• ALIAS records (GSLB): balance across regions using hostnames instead of fixed IPs.
• Health checks: tune probes and detection speed.
• Manage with Terraform: put all of the above under version control.
• Adding nodes (scaling out): grow the cluster for more capacity or resilience.