QUOTE (Tomy Durden @ Apr 29 2009, 02:00 PM)

Ah DNS... can't live with it, can't live without it.
You'll find that DNS will be one of those things you'll start disliking. It's often the cause of issues which seem to just happen out of the middle of nowhere.
"Middle of nowhere." Thats a great to describe DNS. Works great one minute, the next something, somewhere has changed. Also, if you have staff, try to keep your DNS management team to a limited number of people. Too many fingers in the chip bowl and things tend to break.
QUOTE
I highly recommend putting some time into learning DNS. It'll save you from those sleepless nights trying to figure those elusive issues. I'd even go as far as saying learn it without any control panels or scripts, then you'll have a better understanding when those panels and scripts don't do what you want it to do.
Luckily, when I was first learning DNS, there were no control panels... Always keep in mind that missing/extra periods(.) and spaces( ) are often found to cause problems. If you have to edit a zone file manually, make sure to use something that does syntax highlighting, it'll help in the long run.
I find times where I have to force myself to use the control panel (like my customers would) instead of making changes on the server side. Most of the time I just make the manual changes unless I know the control panel will become out of sync. Good suggestion for those just starting with DNS.