Hi,

I'm absolutely new to dedicated hosting, I have the Windows 2003 server with Plesk and currently I'm trying to add a hosting for the first domain. From what I have learned here on the forums I guess that there are three options:

1. use ServerMatrix DNS name servers
2. run my own name servers
3. use 3rd party name servers (like zoneedit.com)

I would like to hear from the gurus here what are the pros & cons of each of the options listed above (especially first two). I guess that it would be easier to use the first option if I'm not going to use a large amount of domains (<10). On the other hand, I guess that the second option would give more control, but is it good to have both nameservers on one machine? I don't know if I understand it right but at the domain registrar's site two distinct entries are required, does this mean that 2 of my IPs would have to be used for this?

In case I decide to continue with the second option (to run my own nameserver) - what do I need to do in order to configure my first domain (let's call it www.myfirstdomain.com)? I suppose that the first step is to create a domain hosting for myfirstdomain.com on my server using the Plesk control panel (it is a Windows 2003 server). This also creates a NS record ns.myfirstdomain.com - but I thought that there have to be two such records? Am I supposed to create another one? And then use the ns1.myfirstdomain.com and ns2.myfirstdomain.com as the nameservers at the registrars site, or is there anything else that needs to be done in order to make it work?

And in case I decide to continue with the forst option (to use the SM nameservers) - what needs to be done on my side / at the server?

I'm sorry for asking questions that are probably trivial (or perhaps stupid), but I've been searching for information on this whole day and am absolutely clueless. Thanks for helping me in advance!

Rado

Correct, this option gives you the most control but your putting all your eggs in one basket. If this box goes down then dns is completely down for any domains you host. And yes you'll need to use two ips, but they can still be used for other stuff as well.

When the concept of DNS came about, it was way before the concept of virtual hosting was made possible. Typically at that time, you do not share resources. One website = one server. Mail servers has its own server and so on. So in that situation, it is possible for one DNS server to go down while the other servers still alive. But basically if DNS is down everything else would seems down too. So thus the need for redundancy to prevent that from happening.

In today's context, we have virtual everything. One machine now play host to the DNS server, mail server, webserver and whatever server. And also the thing about multiple web sites on that very same machine sounds like a pipe dreams in the earlier years.

So when that history lesson said and done. Here is the insight.

If you are hosting the all-in-one solution (mail, web, ftp) on one machine, there is really no redundancy. If the DNS server is on it and goes down, everything goes down too. Effectively, it is as good as dead in the waters. In today's context, DNS server failures are rare (if they are configured properly). What usually is the first to go is the web server. So having redundant dns would not help there.

All in all, the 3 options does not appear to have any real advantage to the other in terms of redundancy.

The advantage I see about hosting the DNS separate is that you free up some system resources on your machine, block off a vulnerability point (each running program represents a possible point of attack) and most importantly it allows you to migrate server easily as long as you remain in the same network.

As for the last point, say you get a Celeron server now then in a few months time you outgrow that to the point where you need to move to a faster and bigger machine. If you use SM's DNS, you could just move the sites over to the new machine (ftp or whatever means). Each site would have new IP addresses. Then when you verify that everything is shifted and system secured, you just need to go into Orbit Support Area, change all the IP addresses of all your sites and the switchover is almost instanteous. Since the DNS server itself does not change, the switch over is internal.

If you host your own DNS, you get to select the DNS name but if you need to move, it can be nightmarish because there would be some downtime as the new DNS servers need to be repropagated and if you use new DNS servernames, you need to change all DNS server names for each site so if you are lucky, all done in 48 hours.. if not, it can take up to 72 hours to switch.

Okay, if you use SM's DNS, what you need to do on their end is each time you create a new site, you drop them a Domain Admin ticket by providing the domain name + IP address and they will do the adding for you. You do it for every single Domain Name. For subdomain, you can do the admistration yourself. It is rather simple. But this step seems to be missed out by some.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for your reply! Does it make a big difference when the DNS is down for a domain, and when the DNS is OK and the server running the web/mail server for that domain is down?

From what you say it seems that it would be a better solution to use the DNS available at SM, or at least to use a secondary DNS somewhere else (but this would involve maintaining all A/MX/CNAME records on both servers and keeping them synchronized if I'm correct?).

Thanks again!
rado

Edwin, thank you for a detailed response, it was really helpful! I think I will try to play with the first option - use the ServerMatrix DNS.

One final question: If I would like to host my own DNS and my domain is myfirstdomain.com, I have created the NS records ns1.myfirstdomain.com and ns2.myfirstdomain.com at my server, can I put these two into the nameserver fields at the registrar site, or do I have to do anything else to make it work? Is it possible to use the same domain for the DNS at all?

Thanks a lot again!

Rado

I would assume that you know what to do on your server from what I see from your response. So I shall not go into that.

On your domain name registrar, there are two things you need to do. The first thing would be to register the DNS server with them. This would involve creating the dns server entry by providing them the full DNS name and the associated IP addresses. These would need to match that on your server.
The terminology for this varies from host to host.

The second part would be the common thing we always do and that is just to change the DNS entry on the domain name detail page.

Both steps would take between 12 to 48 hours each to propagate.

Yes, you can use the same domain name for all your DNS servers. Since your domain name registrar would keep the records, you do not need to explicitly have to have the site with that domain name on that specific machine.

If you have two servers, let's supposed that each runs only 1 site.

Server 1 has ghi.com
and
Server 2 has jkl.com

On server 1, you can have ns1.ghi.com and ns2.ghi.com . You can point the Server 2 dns as ns3.ghi.com and ns4.ghi.com .

If you are creative like what I did, I called mine something like leo.ghi.com and so on. It does not officially have to be ns-something. You can even have something like ilovebritneyspears.ghi.com for whatever reasons and it will still work.

So in short, as long as you have control of a domain name, you can create DNS based on that domain for as many servers as you like even if the name is not hosted on any of the servers.

Well, I think I know what to do I'll have to read more about this and hopefully I'll be able to work this out. Eventually I will get back to this thread.



Ahh, this is what I was missing, I knew there has to be something more. I will try to find out how this could be done with godaddy.com.

Thank you very much for your time!

Rado

I am using godaddy.com myself so what I could say is after you log in to your domain admin into your domain name. The very last tree on the right is what you should be looking at.

Thanks a lot for you help! I've setup the DNS at Orbit and the domain used for this test seem to be working! Maybe I will try the other setup (with hosting my own DNS) for some other domain, but I think I can do it now.

I've got one more question. In the welcome message from ServerMatrix there are two nameservers mentioned to be used when using their DNS -nsX.servermatrix.com (substitute X with 1 and 2 ). I did use these two at the registrar (GoDaddy), but when I sign in into the Orbit -> Domain Admin for this domain, it lists the following NS records: ns1.thelanet.com and ns2.theplanet.com.

It seems to work this way, but when I checked it using the dnsreport.com, it reports several red errors due to this discrepancy. Should I rather use nsX.theplanet.com at the registrar instead of nsX.servermatrix.com to correct this?

Thanks in advance!
Rado

ns1.servermatrix.com to ns1.theplanet.com and so on. Yes, with DNSreport.com you get the red flag but it does work fine.

It is basically like if you were to go to godaddy create your own DNS server but point them to ns1.theplanet.com . It is like 2 names to one dns server but otherwise there is nothing to worry about.

Everything is created on the ns1/ns2.theplanet.com DNS servers. ns1/ns2.servermatrix.com are just pointers.

I am from the old generation user and I use ns1/ns2.theplanet.com .

Thanks for a lightning response!

I think you deserve some ServerMatrix equivalent of an MVP award that Microsoft gives to professionals in return for their help to other people.

Rado