I've been looking for way to resolve host name for client on Windows Server 2012, just like if I added it to hosts file of the client workstations running Windows 7/8.
In hosts file I would add following entries as example:
192.168.12.145 linux.example.com
192.168.12.145 site.example.com
192.168.12.145 services.example.com
So client computers could connect to the address with the URL instead of IP, the machine on the other end of the address is server with Debian installed on it, running other services in which I would like to connect to with local connection.