• Mikrotik router to not DNS NAT local domain/host names (there are a few)? Or
• Pihole to forward resolution of these domains to Mikrotik router instead of upstream DNS?

The issue I am facing:
I cannot lookup hostnames on my local network when I use Pi-Hole as my DNS. I can reach them via their IPs, but hostnames with local domain names (like .home, .lab etc) does not work anymore.

Details about my system:
I am running Pi-Hole on RPi. Versions are:

Pi-hole [v5.14.2]
FTL [v5.20]
Web Interface[v5.18]

I have a router that supports multiple VLANs and my network is segmented into 4 VLANs. Pi-Hole lives within one VLAN and is accessible to other VLANs via proper routing rules in place. Pi-Hole is also setup with DoH with Cloudflare and DNSSEC.

Router is the DHCP server and I'd like to keep it that way as it allocates IPs for various subnets across multiple VLANs. Router also maintains its own DNS list for local network.

What I have changed since installing Pi-hole:
Before introducing Pi-Hole, the router was the DNS. It resolved local network domains and hostnames via its own local DNS list that it maintains (its dynamic and keeps track of which hosts are connected at any given time). It also forwarded DNS requests to external DNS that I configured.

Now that Pi-Hole is the default DNS across all VLANs, I can see the traffic, the dashboard, who is doing what. But I cannot use local hostnames with local domain names anymore. I'd like to be able to use my local network names again.

How can I tell Pi-Hole to forward DNS requests for specific domain names to my router, instead of Cloudflare?

Thanks in advance!

add static entries inside pihole

And inside the MikroTik device, how is managed to bind DNSs with IPs?
Are not already hardcoded? «only exist within the Mikrotik static DNS table»

Then:

PC has pihole DNS, pihole has RouterOS DNS, then RouterOS use public DNS?

You can put these hosts into firewall address lists, and then in nat rule you can exclude them. Address lists supports dns resolving (add hostname instead ip into Address field) and it creates dynamic address list with resolved ip of host.

@ZeeKay
I'll stop here, I don't know how pihole works, but probably if you make it also the DHCP server can automatically add the fqdn.

You can put these hosts into firewall address lists, and then in nat rule you can exclude them. Address lists supports dns resolving (add hostname instead ip into Address field) and it creates dynamic address list with resolved ip of host.

I thought about that and wasnt sure if this will work. Another data point is that I have VLANs for each of my internal networks, so I was wondering if I can write a DNS NAT rule such that if the destination IP is within recognized VLANs then do not NAT the DNS.

I thought about that and wasnt sure if this will work. Another data point is that I have VLANs for each of my internal networks, so I was wondering if I can write a DNS NAT rule such that if the destination IP is within recognized VLANs then do not NAT the DNS.

It can be done with address lists as I mentioned in my first reply, I knew you will needed this at some point

It can be done with address lists as I mentioned in my first reply, I knew you will needed this at some point

Can you elaborate on the specifics. I have a VLAN identifier and each VLAN has its own as well. So I believe I can filter based on that. Regardless, what will the DNS NAT rule need to look like?