Hi,

What is the advantage/disadvantage of using SM DNS instead of creating my own on the new server?

I will be hosting a few different sites on my server and one of them will get wuite a bit of traffic. The other ones are very small. Should I create my own DNS as ns1/2.mydomain.com or use SM DNS?

Thanks.

Depends, the advantage of your own DNS is easier to update and you can added new sites without waiting for SM. However, it comes with the additional overhead. Microsoft DNS is pretty simple to do and very lite (in terms of RAM and CPU usage) BIND is much more complex (but still nice on the CPU and RAM) Basically, the question becomes do you want to wait for SM to set up your domains or is using your own DNS a trivial thing for you.

Thats an opinion. Good thing about using SM is they are not on the same machine or subnet. bad thing about it, updating DNS records isnt local on the machine, although Im pretty sure can be done in Orbit(someone who uses this correct me if Im mistaken)

I personally dont have a need to run my own DNS. No reason to run DNS services with only a few domains. however in some cases it might be handy.

Another available option is to use an outside DNS service like afraid.org. Which comes in handy if you need to edit something real quick without access to the machine.

If you have two boxes, (some of us do) then your arguement about different subnets because invalid. Besides, unless he's load balancing using round robin, it won't matter if DNS and WEB are on the same box. If the server dies, Web is gone anyways, it's not a big deal if people can't resolve his domain, no webserver is there to answer it. Besides, it's not a big deal to set up a simple monitor system. It all comes down to time and knowledge. If you have A. the time and B. the knowledge you just about do anything you want.

EDIT: yes after you set up DNS with SM, you control your domains via orbit.

Yeah I do realise some people have more than one machine. He did use my server without a s, so I figured he meant he had one. Could be wrong. Still dont see exactly what was incorrect about my statement?

I only have one server for now.

I think I will keep the NS from SM. They are quite fast on adding my IPs to their DNS zone once I open the ticket in Orbit.

Thanks.

I wasn't saying you were incorrect. Yes if setting DNS is difficult for you, SM DNS is a great idea. HOwever, if DNS doesn't scare you, then setting up your own is trivial. I sometimes hear the arguement against DNS and Web on the same box. My response to that is if DNS and Web are not on the same box, and your web box dies but your DNS is still function, it won't matter because you web box is dead along with the webpage.

I do my own DNS hosting for about 26 zones. I used to do SM dns hosting, but decided to switch over after putting in several tickets in one day, luckily no outages resulted.

I remember being up at theplanet several months ago and I was talking to a tech and he said he was working on the dumbest support ticket that was giving him a real bad headache. He told me some really small customer decided to start running his own DNS on his windows server and he completely screwed it up...

Basically, my advice... If you don't have a need for it, just don't mess with it. The old saying comes up here... If it ain't broke, dont fix it...

Nope.

If you have DNS only on your own server (using 2 different IP addresses) then you can suffer the following:

1. If the server goes down, anyone trying to visit websites will get a DNS failure the same as if the domain does not exist. If you had 2 separate DNS servers (as you should) then browsers generally return a temporary unavailable message.

2. More importantly, if the server goes down, then MX records do not resolve and any email sent to you will not be queued on the senders server, it will bounce with an error. If you had 2 separate DNS servers, the MX will resolve, and the senders server will usually queue the email for up to 4 days retrying to deliver the email. When your server comes back up, the email will be delivered.

If you're running a server for web hosting it realy is essential that you have two separate DNS servers (apart from the fact that it is required by the RFC's).

You should also always have the two DNS servers on different networks for redundancy - this means having one with a different provider to SM incase their network should go down.

If email delivery and visitors believeing that your site no longer ecxists, is not important to you, then go ahead and use DNS on one server alone :shock:

Thanks for saving me all that typing chirpy.

My pleasure

How do I get anonymity and yet redundancy when using SM nameservers?

What do you mean by anonymity?

anonimity means using own DNS.

DNS redundancy needed because ".. if the server goes down, then MX records do not resolve and any email sent to you will not be queued on the senders server, it will bounce with an error. If you had 2 separate DNS servers, the MX will resolve, and the senders server will usually queue the email for up to 4 days retrying to deliver the email. When your server comes back up, the email will be delivered."

I also read that we can do something about the DNS zone files. Is there any documentation we can do that? Something like primary and secondary zones files. Is it the same as DNS slaving?

I do not want to submit tickets each time I add a domain.

Thank you.