So I’ve been a pihole user for a long long time…but seeing the advancements in AdGuard Home and some of the nicer UI facets, I was interested in giving it a try. I also have an active directory domain that I need to manage as well.
So, prior to recently, I had routed all DNS requests thought the AD DCs, and their upstream resolver was PiHole, and then Pihole routed to its internal install of cloudflared with DNS over HTTPS to the cloudflare DNS services.
More recently, I changed my DNS services in DNS to point directly to pihole, managed my local dns records in pihole and then used conditional forwarding to my AD DCs for local DNS resolution. The biggest benefit I saw in this adjustment is that I can identify what hosts are making what requests.
More recently than that, I brought Adguard Home into the environment and am using it as a secondary DNS server. I ended up taking it out of the mix for the moment. My thought process was having one DNS server on each of my active VM hosts just in case…but managing internal DNS records in adguard home is a bit of a pain in the ass, and there is no way to import in bulk.
So, the questions, 1) do you just use one or the other… pihole, vs adguard home… 2) do you use multiple dns servers or just a single one upstream…3) whats your preferred method of internal dns management in conjunction w/ pihole/adguard home?
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Opnsense Unbound
Me three.
clients>pihole>unbound
Same. Although I really wish Pihole supported wildcard domains in local DNS. I haven’t quite figured out how to add wildcard domain with unbound.
It does, but you have to tinker a bit more than usual. Because pihole uses dnsmasq, you can modify the dnsmasq configuration file to allow for wildcard subdomains. Unfortunately, while this will be picked up by pihole, you can view or modify it through their Web interface, so it’s much less convenient.
If you use helm charts this is really easy!! The one I use from mojo exposes this in the helm chart / config.
Wait, is your unbound querying the root servers directly? Aren’t services that use cdn having their performance affected ?
Not that I’ve noticed
This!
Pinhole+unbound
I use Unbound as a DNS resolver and pfBlockerNG for ad blocking. My firewall blocks external DNS, DoH, & DoT servers except for
dns.adguard-dns.com, which I use on my phone.I use nextdns as I can use that when mobile but if you want a local solution adguard home has DOH/DOT built in and a nicer interface than pihole IMHO
Adguardhome + Opnsense
2 instances of Adguard Home (VM and Raspberry PI with adguard sync) using DOH upstream servers (currently Cloudflare, Quad 9, and Mullvad). Works like a champ, have not touched it in over a year.
Came here to recommend AdGuard Sync. 👌
Clients -> dnsmasq -> PiHole -> Unbound
If you have active directory why not just use it’s DNS server?
I use two Technitium DNS servers, the primary server runs in a container under Proxmox and the secondary as a failover on a Pi4. I only use Pihole for a handful of clients (mobile phone, FireTV etc.) these are assigned the DNS address from PiHole via DHCP, all other devices use the Technitium DNS directly. As internal domains I use the scheme “host.in.lan” and all devices (except servers) get their IP via DHCP (the Technitium DNS server also has this built in) and a DNS entry is automatically created for them via DDNS
Straight into Pihole with Cloudflare upstream
I use AGH on both of my servers at home and sync them with adguardhome-sync.
They are the DHCP assigned DNS servers for everyone who lives with us and all the services I run.
I use Adguard. I dumped pi-hole a long time ago and never looked back.
What made you move away from Pi-Hole?
I moved away from pihole because every time I had a fiddle, I bought down the DNS of my whole house, resulting in lots of stressed children :) the solution I switched to is against the ethos of this sub, but it’s good and worth the cost.
Also dumped Pi-hole & moved to AGH over a year now. It’s easier to set up. Encrypted DNS (DoT, DoH, DoQ, etc.) supported with no added install. On Pi-hole I have to install Cloudflared for DoH. AGH also has a large number of blocklists to choose from on DNS blocklists setting. You don’t have to Google search for it like that of Pi-hole. Adding a blocklist is as simple as clicking on the check box & checking for updates. On Pi-hole you have to go through a couple of steps (gui >tools>update gravity). AGH software update also is very simple. An update notice will show up on top if there’s a new update & you just need to click it to update. On Pi-hole you have to login via SSH & issue a pihole -up command to update.
ugh. this is my sign, but I’m not happy about it
If one rando/shill says something sucks you bail out? Hmm.
What was your reasoning for dumping pi-hole?
I get it…it’s awesome. Just took a second to wrap my head around some of the nuances that I needed for my environment. But hellz yea, works great. I wish the dashboard had automatic ajax refreshing though.
I dumped Pi-hole for Adguard and two technitium dns servers. Personally, I found /r/pihole community toxic. Adguard is also way easier to back up and replicate since the config file is a single yaml file.
I use NextDNS on occasion. I used to use pihole a while back during the “Covid years” but something it was blocking royally screwed up my kid’s Google Classroom submitted schoolwork, he was turning in empty assignments and we thought it was his fault but it wasn’t. Had to apologize to multiple schoolteachers and vowed never to use that piece of shit software again.
