Strange advice from my managed server guys

B

BWH

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Apr 7, 2005
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Hi All

I've operated as a reseller for a few years and have just stepped up to my own server. As I'm founding out there is quite a lot I don't know about the issues associated with running your own server but rest assured I'll be learning very quickly.

I was talking to my server guys and asking them about the best use of IP's and I'm not to sure about the advice they gave.

I have two IP's at the moment and I'm setting up the server to use the main hosting domain name. I assumed I'd use both of these IP's for each NS but was told to just bind both NS1 and NS2 to the one IP address and just use the other for a 'spare'. Now I'm confused because I thought the idea of having two nameservers was incase one fails. Surely if they are both tied to the same IP then if one dies they both die? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Also the next point of confusion concering IP's is how many to assign to resellers so they can have their own nameservers? And I've seen the thread hear about 'Allowing domains to have there own NS without using IP's' but I must admit it confused me more than anything else. Why do I need to pretend to have another IP, why not just buy one? Is there a benefit to faking it?

Your help and patience is appreciated.

Regards

BWH
 
Is the name server running on the same machine that you are talking about? If so what difference does it make if you have one nameserver or two listed or if it has one IP or two? What I am saying is that you only have one name server and having two IPs pointing to the same name server is no more redundant than having one. Because if the name server goes down both IPs go down. Now if you have a real second machine that you are using for DNS then you have some redundancy and it will of course need it's own IP. However if it is on the same network as the other one and you have an outage on the network they both are dead. That is why it is best to have one on one network and the other on a separate network (two IP's of course)

I am not sure how DA works on the reseller IPs for DNS but do they need there own IPs or will the system normally just use the IPs assigned to DNS on that box but use DNS to make it look like it is theirs? Can DA do both ways?
 
Thanks for the response.

I see your point about the two ip's being on the same machine so if one goes down they would still both go down. I know on the few reseller accounts i've had they always offer two ips for custom nameservers. Are you saying that both are on seperate machines? Yep I'm still confused :(

As for the second part of your post I'm going to have to wait for somebody else to answer that.

Regards

BWH
 
I could not say how your other hosts did it because as you can see it can be done in many different ways.

For my resellers they get 2 IPs, one for each DNS server and each IP goes to a different server. The DNS servers are just that, DNS servers and do nothing else such as web, mail etc. However they are both on the same class C so they are not truly redundant. This is of course not using DA as the control panel, I have not even decided if I am going to offer anything other than dedicated servers with DA.
 
With regard to the DNS ip's, it doesn't really matter which ip's you use. Some registrars require different ip's for different nameservers (hence you need 2 ip's to run a DNS server) the ICANN requires 2 different ip's as far as I know. The German registrar even requires 2 ip's in different subnets.

What you could do is point 2 a-records to 2 different ip's to make sure that some registrars will effectively take your 2 nameserver addresses. I agree with DamnSkippy, don't think you have true redudancy, you don't. If the box goes down that's the end of it. DNS won't work anymore.

There has been numerous discussion on whether or not you actually want true DNS redundancy, since if the box is down, so is your http. The main advantage for true DNS redundancy is mail, if someone sends an e-mail and your box is down it will remain in queue, otherwise it will bounce.
 
Yeah that is why I have not gone so far as to move my DNS2 server to another subnet/network/DC on my hsphere and Helm clusters plus to be very honest at the price point I charge going that far is not in the budget.
 
IP's To Resellers

On the same point as my OP...

Looking for advice on the best way to set up reseller options.

Would you advise offering two IP's in each package? Would they use these for private NS? What about these options too? What's the best settings? I'm looking for the best offering but also the most secure for my server.

> DNS Control
> Personal IP's
> Share Server IP

Thanks for all the help so far.

BWA
 
We supply unlimited IPs on justification. The key is that justification; it's not necessarily easy to get more IP#s when you run out.

We create resellers with no extra IP#s, but let them use our main shared IP# for ns1 and an IP# from another server for ns2 (we take care of the slave DNS to the other server).

There's no reason why all your resellers can't use the same two IP#s for their nameservers.

Jeff
 
Thanks for that Jeff.

Sorry if this sounds redundant but I just need to be clear in my head.

So you're saying that there's no need to let them have IP's. They can use the server IP's for their own branded servers (?). What about the other two options?

> DNS Control
> Share Server IP

I'm guessing yes to the last option but what about 'DNS Control'?

Thanks

BWH
 
So is that the default way DA works is to share the server IPs for DNS with all the resellers for their DNS? That is fine of course just want to know how it works. Also if so can you assign the their own IPs if you want?
 
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