DNSonly like behaviour

[titanblastpro]

Hello,

I am a user transitioning from cPanel, where I primarily used it for managing my email and DNS hosting services, as well as those of my subusers. I would need to be on an Unlimited user license.

After their yet another price increase, I am looking for an alternative. DirectAdmin overall seems like a nice choice; however, since I am primarily using it for DNS and email, I was looking for a functionality like DNSonly.

To quickly go through, DNSonly servers on cPanel are like replicas of all DNS zones and records from the main server. This is done so it's more reliable, as having DNS on a separate machine and on more than one separate machine is way better than relying on the main cPanel server.

I am wondering if DirectAdmin has anything similar to this. Just so that it can be redundant. Ideally, also without license costs like it's on cPanel (WHM DNSonly is DNSonly and not full WHM/cPanel experience).

If something similar exists, please let me know as I would be incredibly happy to once and for all ditch cPanel for this specific use case, because every year constantly they strangle me more and more, and it's hard because I don’t even utilise all the features, yet keep paying more and more.

I am not looking to bypass or cheat account accounting, only to avoid paying more for DNS-only features while still paying the full licence price where the accounts are actually created and benefiting from the clustering reliability. Any integrations work for me, as long as they are reliable and stress-free (agai,n looking for the closest to DNS-only as possible).

Thank you very much in advance!

All the best

 

[Richard G]

also without license costs like it's on cPanel (WHM DNSonly is DNSonly and not full WHM/cPanel experience).

Yes kind of. In fact the "free" DNSonly is already calculated in the price of cPanel.
Direct admin does not have any free DNS itself.

However, it doesn't say so but you can use the Personal Plus 5/month license for unlimited DNS if you use it for DNS only. For that price you're still nowhere near the price of a cPanel license with unlimited accounts, not even 5 accounts, LoL.

With this you can make use of the MultiServer setup from DA itself which replicates all DNS zones to the other server or VPS with the Personal Plus license.

There are other ways. For example you can use Directslave (also support on this forum) which is a free tool which can run on a very small VPS and you can even use it for multiple servers. This is really DNS only, no DA installation required.

Ofcourse others like PowerDNS are also an option.

 

[titanblastpro]

Yes kind of. In fact the "free" DNSonly is already calculated in the price of cPanel.
Direct admin does not have any free DNS itself.

However, it doesn't say so but you can use the Personal Plus 5/month license for unlimited DNS if you use it for DNS only. For that price you're still nowhere near the price of a cPanel license with unlimited accounts, not even 5 accounts, LoL.

With this you can make use of the MultiServer setup from DA itself which replicates all DNS zones to the other server or VPS with the Personal Plus license.

There are other ways. For example you can use Directslave (also support on this forum) which is a free tool which can run on a very small VPS and you can even use it for multiple servers. This is really DNS only, no DA installation required.

Ofcourse others like PowerDNS are also an option.

Hi,


Thank you very much for your quick reply. To be fair, $5 is not a problem at all. It comes to like $29 + 4 x$5 ($20) is completely reasonable for unlimited accounts (and much less than what I pay now)

However, the thing is I am not sure if I can combine a Standard licence with 4 x Personal Plus. Would this work even if domains are spread across many accounts on the slave (i.e., more than 2 that Personal Plus accounts for)?

Thank you!

 

[DrWizzle]

Hi,


Thank you very much for your quick reply. To be fair, $5 is not a problem at all. It comes to like $29 + 4 x$5 ($20) is completely reasonable for unlimited accounts (and much less than what I pay now)

However, the thing is I am not sure if I can combine a Standard licence with 4 x Personal Plus. Would this work even if domains are spread across many accounts on the slave (i.e., more than 2 that Personal Plus accounts for)?

Thank you!

As long as the main DA customer accounts are kept on your main server, with the $29 license on, you can easily get away with using 1 (or more) $5 licences on smaller VPS instances as DNS servers. As you're really only copying the DNS zones onto the VPS servers with MultiServer, a $5 is all you need. If you were mirroring servers for failover/CDN clusters etc, you'd need a full licence on all the servers.

To save even more money, depending on how hands on you are, look at DirectSlave (Search for the thread on this forum) and it's free to install on as many slave servers as you want without DA or the need for a DA license. It works the same as multiserver and uses the DA multiserver APIs to transfer zones. So in theory, a $29 licence for each full server setup for customers, $5 fo a personal plus DA licence (DNS Master) and X x FREE setups on your slave DNS servers with DirectSlave.

Multiple ways to do this, it's all down to personal preference, skill and budget.

And welcome to the dark side!!

 

[Richard G]

+ 4 x$5 ($20)

Out of curiosity. How do you get to 4x $5? You only need 1 extra DNS server right? Because if you only use it for DNS you can use it for unlimited domains DNS.

Be aware, it's an either/or situation. If you start using the personal license with domains (or 2 accounts, not sure anymore) then you can't use it anymore for unlimited domains, then it will work only with the 20 domains limit.
So that is a thing.

If you want to spread out, you might want to chose 1 unlimited $29, then 1 lite license (15/mont, 9 accounts excluding admin and 50 domains) and 1 Personal plus license for DNS only which can be used as slave DNS for both others.

The unlimited can be used on its turn as slave DNS for the lite license too.

It's a choice you have to make with personal licenses, either DNS only or 2 accounts limited to 20 domains.
Be aware that in fact it's only 1 extra account on the licenses because 1 account is always for admin.

And there is always directslave too.

 

[titanblastpro]

Out of curiosity. How do you get to 4x $5? You only need 1 extra DNS server right? Because if you only use it for DNS you can use it for unlimited domains DNS.

Be aware, it's an either/or situation. If you start using the personal license with domains (or 2 accounts, not sure anymore) then you can't use it anymore for unlimited domains, then it will work only with the 20 domains limit.
So that is a thing.

If you want to spread out, you might want to chose 1 unlimited $29, then 1 lite license (15/mont, 9 accounts excluding admin and 50 domains) and 1 Personal plus license for DNS only which can be used as slave DNS for both others.

The unlimited can be used on its turn as slave DNS for the lite license too.

It's a choice you have to make with personal licenses, either DNS only or 2 accounts limited to 20 domains.
Be aware that in fact it's only 1 extra account on the licenses because 1 account is always for admin.

And there is always directslave too.

heya, thank you for the reply again.

Maybe I misunderstood, but if I have a standard license acting as master for $29 and I want to have 4 redundant DNS servers, that would be 4x $5 for the 4 slaves. At least in cPanel until now, I've had 4 DNSslaves, and nothing related to DNS was running on the master.

To keep clear of confusion;

My idea was to run Standard on the master and then use the Lite license as "DNSslaves". And to note, no accounts would be created on slaves. They would act purely in DNSonly capability. Accounts and stuff would be created on the master, while the 4 slaves (let's ignore that the master can also host DNS for simplicity) would be DNS ones exclusively.

However, I am not sure if this would work since you mentioned some either/or scenario.

I think you might mean I can decide across all servers in a cluster to be DNSonly, or cash up and pay equivalent license on all masters and slaves... or just use master + directslave

Thank you.

 

[DrWizzle]

Again, it's up to you. If you want 4 DNS servers, that would technically be 4 lots of $5 if you wanted all 4 to have DA on them, alternatively, $5 for master, $0 for directslave saving $180 a year. Either way will work with your main server as long as you link it multiserver to your master DNS setup.

Att the moment, you can only add 2 nameservers on the main control panel, you you'd probably have to update one of the templates to automatically add all of your 4 NS records to each customer's domain zone files as you create them. @Richard G , @zEitEr or @romans would probably be able to guide you with that one.

 

[DrWizzle]

Thought i'd post this as well, It helped me last year. Credit to @ericosman for this post

Found even a more easy way @Richard G haha
There was a Github (not maintained anymore) and i tested it, made some small changes (have to test)
And see here : https://github.com/osmanboy/directslave-install

*Note it's idiot proof... because i could use it

 

[titanblastpro]

Again, it's up to you. If you want 4 DNS servers, that would technically be 4 lots of $5 if you wanted all 4 to have DA on them, alternatively, $5 for master, $0 for directslave saving $180 a year. Either way will work with your main server as long as you link it multiserver to your master DNS setup.

Att the moment, you can only add 2 nameservers on the main control panel, you you'd probably have to update one of the templates to automatically add all of your 4 NS records to each customer's domain zone files as you create them. @Richard G , @zEitEr or @romans would probably be able to guide you with that one.

I see. Okay, I didn't know it was limited to 2. That makes much more sense now, why use directslave and why not cluster licenses. I apologise for the confusion. It makes total sense. I was just tied to cPanel's way of doing it.

Thank you so much for all the support and time you took to explain it.

 

[DrWizzle]

I see. Okay, I didn't know it was limited to 2. That makes much more sense now, why use directslave and why not cluster licenses. I apologise for the confusion. It makes total sense. I was just tied to cPanel's way of doing it.

Thank you so much for all the support and time you took to explain it.

You can have as many DNS and nameservers as you like, but as you see from this screenshot, you can only set 2. You may be able to edit a template or create a hook to add nameservers into the zone file on creation and then run an update to push it to all DNS servers and slaves.

 

[Richard G]

I see. Okay, I didn't know it was limited to 2.

That depends. By default it's limited to 2. But you can add a 3rd one.

General DNS | Directadmin Docs

DirectAdmin Knowledge Base

docs.directadmin.com

As for Directslave, I don't use the scripts, found something in there and replied to Ericosman's post, just can find the post that quickly.
But ofcourse you can try that script, and I can always help if you run into issues.

But Directslave would save you 15/month if you want 3 licenses for DNS. So you would only have the small VPS systems they would be on.