Hey folks. I'm new to The Planet / Server Matrix and have a few questions about DNS Administration through Orbit.

1. How much control do we get through Orbit? Do we have the ability to manage all types of records (MX,A,CNAME,etc)? How about changing things like TTL? Besides being able to flex our sysadmin muscles, is there any advantage to running our own name server over using The Planet's?

2. How's the GUI? I haven't been able to find any help docs or screen shots of the DNS Adminstration area, so I was curious how friendly it is.

3. My main domain is currently hosted at another provider. I've been slowly coming up with my cutover plan and was wondering if you folks had any suggestions as far as DNS goes. My idea right now is to set up everything for my domain in Orbit's DNS area ahead of time, and then when the time comes, change the NS servers for my domain to point to The Planet. Is this a bad/dangerous/stupid idea? The only downside that I can think of is that until the NS switch, anyone who uses The Planet for DNS resolution would be pointing at the new server, whereas the rest of the world would be pointing at my current server.


Thanks,
Jay

Well, I would say quite a lot of controls.

Yes, you can manage MX, A, CNAME, TXT and other types of records. TTL timing change is possible too.

Well, if you run your own Name Server, you can have the DNS Servers hosted with your choice of full qualifying domain name. If you use The Planet, it would show up as ns1.theplanet.com and so on..

The Planet DNS (NS1 and NS2) are physically separated so it gives you that extra level of redundancy as if one fails, the other would continue functioning. If your server goes down, it can still accept lookups instead of just failing altogether.

If you add a lot of new domains on a regular basis, having your own DNS servers would be helpful because with The Planet DNS, you need to open a ticket to create a new entry (but editing you can do it on your own).

With The Planet DNS Servers, you can only host IPs which are in The Planet's facilities but with your own DNS Servers, you can host sites which are both inside and outside The Planet.

The GUI is pretty simple to understand if you know what DNS is. There is no help files. Basically, it is pretty self-explanatory.

As for your idea of switching over, that sounds like a logical step. I am not sure what you are currently running but just a suggestion, if you have control over the DNS Servers or at least the ability to edit the DNS Records for your sites, you can lower the TTL and then change the 'A' records IP address to point to your The Planet IP for that same site. This way, all sites would point to the new server here. Then do what you plan to do about changing the DNS Servers. The transition would be painless.