Nameservers

nomad71

New member
Joined
Jun 23, 2003
Messages
4
Is it better to use the same box for dns services that is running DA or can I have a separate box?

I've read around that by default DA sets up ns1 and ns2, are those two virtual boxes or two physical servers?
(2 separate instances of named?)

Thanks!
 
Hi Nomad,

DirectAdmin uses one instance of named to do DNS configuration on your server. Everything is done all on one box (NS2 is just an alias of NS1).

Some people prefer the stability of external DNS servers, and if you have the extra machines you may choose to do this. Most people, however, like creating sites on DA and letting it do all the DNS configuration for them. :)

Mark
 
The ideal thing would be to have DA setup to use central name servers. We have 3 virtual machines running DA, and were forced to create other NS such as:

NS3.HOSTHEAD.COM
NS4.HOSTHEAD.COM
NS5.HOSTHEAD.COM
NS6.HOSTHEAD.COM

and so on, then when we set it up for a dedicated machine we sell, and that person wants to use our name servers, we again have to setup more. It would be much easier if you could choose between central name servers, or just setting up new ones on the machine.
 
The Stability of External DNS Servers

I've discussed a proposal with Mark, and he's given me permission to make this post in response to this thread.

I'm one of those people who believe in the "Stability of External Nameservers" as one previous poster called it.

I already have multiple nameservers which act as independent master nameservers. Some are running already, others are ready to go the first of September.

We currenly host primary and secondary DNS for thousands of domains, and our solution is both robust and scalable.

Here's what we can do for the DirectAdmin community:

We've automated getting the list of hosted domains from properly configured nameservers (if your DirectAdmin nameserver isn't already properly configured we can explain how to do it or do it for you).

Once we've got the list of hosted domains we've also automated getting the zonefiles transferred to our servers.

If for some reason your nameserver fails to give us the list of domains, or to transfer the previous list to us, we continue to use the list we've already got.

Each of our servers operates independently of the others; if one of our nameservers go down the others continue to work and continue to get updates from your server as necessary.

You then simply point your ns1, ns2, etc., to IP#s you get from us.

No matter how many systems you have, you continue to use your DA to automatically set up DNS, and you continue to point everyone to your own NS1 and NS2 (and so forth) and DNS works, robustly, and automatically.

As Mark put it in an email to me:
What may be best right now is to post on our forum with this idea, and see
how the response is. It wouldn't be considered advertising. If the
response is good, then we would go from there.
What do you think?

Jeff
 
Not bad. It's something I'd be very interested in sooner or later.

What kind of price are we talking about? With a little research I dont think it'd be hard to "forward" DNS requests to the proper IP address. I'd probably setup my custom billing script to -when creating or modifing an account- create (or modify) a forward record (or whatever) on the "routing system."

I think that would work, but again- what kind of price are we talking about? :)

Phi1.
 
It's easier than that, Phi1.

You set up a cronjob to ftp us a copy of your /etc/named.conf file hourly, and we take everything from there. You create your normal nsX.example.com nameserers, and register them with your registrar at IP#s we give you.

Until September 1st we're only able to do secondary DNS; we only have one nameserver available using the software we've written (we'll have more by September 1st). The server is in a suburb of Dallas, TX and is dedicated to DNS.

For pricing please feel free to email me at the address in my sig; I'd rather keep pricing, etc., off the board; I sure don't want John and Mark angry at me ;) .

I'm about to go out for the rest of the day, so I hope late tonight or tomorrow morning (PDT) will work for you as far as getting back to you is concerned.

Thanks!

Jeff
 
Yeah, that's a pretty cool idea, but as I said - I don't need it yet.

I'll let you know when the time comes, and until then I'm interested to hear what other people have to say :D
 
Yeah, but what about those of us who have their own name servers and don't need Jeff's services nor do we want DNS handled by the DA machines?

I don't want resellers/users creating records on the DA boxes, how do we disable this feature?
 
Your name sounds familiar, Brad; I think we may have come across each other on other forums.

We've been setting up DNS for our clients for some time and we finally decided we'd be better off if our clients could automatic DNS setup without either our intervention or theirs.

Is there a reason you decided against this approach?

Obviously you don't need my "services", but I'd think you could set up to do it the same way, using the automatic DNS features of DirectAdmin as a "hidden master".

Jeff
 
Back
Top