> Perhaps a better question to ask is this: > > Do I really need to worry about the HOSTS LOCAL file?
An even better question is: how do I eliminate use of host tables entirely? Consider configuring a very minimal Linux guest as a DHCP client with 'bind' loaded. DHCP will supply the Linux guest with the current DNS info for the environment you're in, or you can create a /etc/resolv.conf that lists the DNS servers for your production domains first and the DNS servers for your DR environment second and allow the Linux guest to handle recursion for name resolution (and caching the results to keep network traffic low). The Linux resolver code is smart enough to try them in order and return only a real answer in response to a remote request. You then configure the VM stack nameserver entries to point to the Linux guest via a private guest LAN. Since you're not trying to be authoritative for anything, you don't need a fixed IP address for the guest (other than the private guest LAN address, but that doesn't appear outside the machine). You can also trivially configure the guest to lie about addresses if you need it to do so w/o changing the production VM stack configuration. This setup allows the VM stacks to never need to worry about the external DNS addresses, and the infrastructure adapts to wherever it's plugged in without needing to make any changes at all. These days, the only thing that should be in host tables is the addresses of local interfaces for use during boot (and as Alan said, in ETC HOSTS, not HOSTS LOCAL).
