best way to setup DNS

[horrighs]

I currently have 3-4 servers and i am reorganizing a bit, moving from nocster to other providers but thats a differnet story...

I would like to know what is the best way to setup the DNS system, i have turned on this clustering but i am not confident its setup right. I have also seen posts here that you should/could have a dedicated server for just DNS.

right now there is about 2500-3000 DNS entries and we add about 100/mo so dedicated server? if so how do i configure it compared to all the other servers? Will this at all help the Addon DSN not deleteing?

If someone is a super whm/cpanel specialist please email me direct i would not be opposed to paying for *good* consulting help.

Steve Horrighs
[email protected]

 

[jdarow]

Personally, I would just have separate name servers for each of your servers. If you had a dedicated DNS server, it would need to have a backup, or all your sites would go dead if your dns server was down.

 

[horrighs]

Originally posted by jdarow
Personally, I would just have separate name servers for each of your servers. If you had a dedicated DNS server, it would need to have a backup, or all your sites would go dead if your dns server was down.

So do you mean have a 2nd server for each primary server?

or if i have 3-4 servers, have an extra 1 just for DNS? If that is the case i am totally ok with that but what DNS/Clustering settings to i need to set?

Steve

 

[phantom2]

Hi,
I use one server for the master name server and then I create a name server on each seperate server for redundancy. However, I'm noticing the more zones you get the more problems you have. I'd like to have 2 servers setup. One for ns1 and one for ns2 but not sure what the best way to do this is. Anybody?

 

[rs-freddo]

IMHO it's better to just run DNS for each server on that server. There is no point having a second dns for redundancy, becuase if your DNS is down it's usually because your server is down. No DNS and no accounts.

If I had 10 servers it might be a different story.

 

[horrighs]

Ok i am really still not getting to the issue here.

I have 3 servers. Dont link them? Have each server do just its own DNS? Or are you saying have a seperate server do the DNS?

Steve

 

[PbG]

I keep ours seperate. There's two ways you could do this. The preferred method would be to:

Make up to four [4] nameservers authoritative but use the main shared IP from each of the servers. Then add as many non authoritative nameservers as you like.

Master/Slave DNS can bring down all your customers if the Master fails without failover redunancy.

Add any servers beyond #4 to the master zone file and make them non authoritative. This will allow you to use the nameservers in future boxes for the domains/zones on the same.

 

[horrighs]

ok and then to bring this all back around to Cpanel/WHM, i setup DNS Clustering how?

NS1 -> Sycronize NS2, NS3, ... NS9
NS2 -> Syncroize NS1
NS3 -> Syncroize NS1
...
NS9 -> Syncroize NS1

like that?

Also since we have around 2500 zone files, i have noticed that the named server takes several minutes to load up and be ready... i can only assume this will continue to slow down more and more?

Steve

 

[PbG]

It will continue to slow down if you keep doing it the way you are now. However I would not do that. I would make each server responsible for the zones on that box only. Why allow all your zones to be dependent on one server . . .

Eg: yourhostingco.net has 850 zones on each of three servers.

Server1 (S1) will carry NS1 from it's main shared IP and NS2 from the secondary IP on the same server.

yourhostingco.net has a zone file on S1 which is authoritative (because it's also listed at your registrar and telling the internet where to find DNS records for yourhostingco.net)

S2 also has the same information using primary and secondary nameservers/IP's from S2

S3 has a zone file for yourhostingco.net that says the exact same thing as the other two zone files. However it is only registered at your registrar. Meaning it is non authoritative and does not appear in the list of nameservers for yourhostingco.net when searching whois.

The customers on s1 -3 only list the nameservers for the server they are on at their registrar.

NOTE: This is only one way to do this there are several. Since this can be confusing I will focus on this method rather than two as I did in my first post. This method limits DNS liability/load to the domains on that particular server including the one for yourhostingco.net