This is because the application server can ping the database server’s IP address, but not its hostname, which suggests that the DNS resolution is not working properly. DNS servers are responsible for translating hostnames into IP addresses, and vice versa. If the application server has incorrect or unreachable DNS servers configured, it will not be able to resolve the hostname of the database server and communicate with it.
To troubleshoot this issue, the systems engineer should check the DNS configuration on the application server, which is usually stored in the /etc/resolv.conf file. This file should contain valid nameserver entries that point to the DNS servers that can resolve the database server’s hostname. For example, a typical /etc/resolv.conf file may look like this:
nameserver 8.8.8.8 nameserver 8.8.4.4
These are the IP addresses of Google’s public DNS servers, which can be used as a fallback option if the default DNS servers are not working.
Alternatively, the systems engineer can use the nslookup or dig commands to test the DNS resolution of the database server’s hostname from the application server. These commands will query a specified DNS server and return the IP address of the hostname, or an error message if the resolution fails. For example, to query Google’s public DNS server for the IP address of comptia.org, the command would be:
nslookup comptia.org 8.8.8.8
or
dig comptia.org @8.8.8.8