To make the development environment identical to the production environment, configure your client to override the authoritative DNS server(s) for the commonidtrust.org domain to the development environment.
Currently, the DNS server for VPC-Dev runs on a personal, free t2.micro instance in EC2 and is accessible at 52.24.15.28. You will need a secondary resolver for real addresses, such as 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2 (Level3), or 8.8.8.8, or 8.8.4.4(Google).
DNS Client Configuration:
Primary: 52.24.15.28
Secondary: 4.2.2.1
VPN with L2TP over IPSec
Alternatively, you can just VPN to the machine and the DNS settings will default to 52.24.15.28 and 8.8.8.8.
On a Mac, go to Network. Click the +. Select VPN as Interface. Name the service whatever you want.
Server Address: 52.24.15.28
Email ndk@internet2.edu to ask for the password and shared secret.
Developer Docs
Installation
yum -y install bind
Configure /etc/named.conf and the zone file /var/named/masters/commonidtrust.org (see examples attached).
chkconfig named on
Logging
named logs to /var/log/messages
Start/Stop Commands
/etc/init.d/named start
/etc/init.d/named stop
This is configured to serve up the A and/or CNAME records for account.commonidtrust.org, helpdesk.commonidtrust.org, and login.commonidtrust.org for the specific VPC environment.