Fussy Nameservers?

P

Pat_Coed

Verified User
Joined
Jan 20, 2013
Messages
27
Hi all!

Hoping someone can shed some light on this...

Basically, purchased a VPS a few days ago, after deciding I wasn't happy with shared hosting overall. Got everything up and running and managed to successfully move across a pile of domains and sites without any problems. Domain names are still with my last host/registrar just updated the nameservers. With my VPS I have 2 IP's which were registered as nameservers several days ago and are resolving without any issues.

Now, I have changed the nameservers for all of my .co.uk domains without any problems. However, I have a mixture of other domains (.com/.net/.biz) and every time I try to update them to my new nameservers I just get an error... I have checked with the registrar (my last host, who to be honest don't seem that fussed on providing any help as my hosting account is being closed in 2 days) and with the company I have the VPS with but have basically been advised that there are no problems with them, its me/my server.

The domains are setup and ready (Centos btw) and everything *looks* correct to me but for some reason if I try to point the NS for a com/net/biz domain it just wont take. At the moment all fingers, thumbs are toes are being pointed in my direction but I cant find any logical reason for it.

I can transfer them all across to my new registrar, but as they are client domains I will be picking up the bill to extend domains that have only been registered in the last 6 months (for those I can transfer that are outside the period) which potentially may not even be active websites in 12 months. Plus, I'm stingy. :-)

At the moment, I have just altered the individual records to point at my server IP and am running through my last host/registrar nameservers.

So my questions are;

a) Is using my last host/registrars nameservers and just updating individual records reason for any concern?
b) Have I missed something completely obvious staring me in the face?
 
Hi,

The response I get is as follows;


Error!

There was a problem sending your nameserver change request. Please double-check that the nameservers are valid, and try again later.

This feature allows you to modify the nameservers for fischerrandledesigns.net. Simply select a set of nameservers below or choose your own.

Please remember that name server changes take up to 72 hours to come into effect, if you specify your own name servers please ensure they are configured to provide DNS for this domain name. Changing your domains name servers to offsite name servers will prevent features such as web forwarding and web hosting from working.



If I make up a NS address though, it gives a different error saying it doesnt exist. Only tried that just to see if it was an error with the NS.

For my .co.uk domains though, when I change the nameserver it takes a few seconds (Probably around 3-5 secs) before the page reloads and shows the new nameservers. However, when I try to change the NS for any other domains (com/biz/net) it pretty much reloads instantly with the above error.

I was going to just bite the bullet on the cost to move them to my new registrar, but if the fault IS on my server, then I will just end up forking out pennies to find I have the same problem.
 
Quick update.

Turns out it was a problem with my registrar. For some reason their domain management system wouldn't let me change nameservers for anything other than .co.uk domains.

They *finally* agreed to update the NS for me (Although they could have just tried when I asked them a couple of days ago instead of fobbing me off.)

Nonetheless, new name servers currently propagating for them all. Took them all of 5 minutes to get my email, update them and email me back. And here was me thinking I had fubar'd my server somehow! :-)
 
Your server is likely fine. However by using two IP#s on the same server you have no DNS redundancy.

Look at it this way: if your server goes down and you do NOT have DNS redundancy site visitors see "Site doesn't exist" errors.

If you DO have DNS redundancy than site visitors see "Site cannot be reached" errors.

Of course if your site goes down you have big problems and you need to fix them, but I'm sure your clients will rather see "Site cannot be reached" rather than "Site doesn't exist" errors.

Not to mention how Google will treat it, if the outage is long enough to get the search engine's attention.

Disclaimer, I sell slave DNS services.

Jeff
 
Hi,

Yeah, as it turned out the server was all ok. :-)

At the moment, its not something I am concerned about simply because there is a relatively low amount of websites but moving forward ensuring a level of redundancy is important. Especially being a sole trader.

One thing I will add since you were kind enough to comment, but I have read hundreds of your posts, comments, replies and threads which made it possible to get my little VPS up and running.

I basically upgraded from shared hosting because I really didnt like the fact that my customers websites would load in a couple of seconds one day and ~15sec the next. I wouldnt be happy with it, so decided I didnt expect my customers to be happy with it. When I made the jump for a VPS I had very little understanding of what or how I was going to do it, and although *some* experience using Redhat in the late nineties I had never used it outside of a private network.

I actually, up until about 2 weeks ago, thought that "Direct Admin" was what it said on the tin i.e. Direct Administration through ssh. Lol.

But from the information on primarily this website, and in the main your comments, I managed to get my head round it and get (imho) a nice clean, lively and well tweaked server up. :-) Granted, there were some mistakes along the way, most notable was locking myself out of my server due to the brute force scripts but easily rectified with a little iphone ssh app over 3G. Lol.

So all in all, big up to DA!! Very impressed with it all.

Will more than likely speak to you again about redundancy, when few more customers to worry about... :-)
 
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