Changing hostname to active account

[bunglehaze]

Hi guys, I hope you can help as my web hosts are not only being entirely unhelpful but their support are refusing to help customers with this particular issue due to a 'management stance'

I have a VPS that I used to use for development and an active domain, as such I use a particular domain as my hostname for the server setup with vanity nameservers (ns1 and ns2 of that domain) that my active domain uses. On the vps there are only two accounts, one for the hostname and nameservers and the active business domain.

There's no need for me to use the VPS host domain any more and with the hosts now stating they will be charging $17 a month extra for having more than a single account it seems prudent to just set the server hostname to my active business domain. I know how to change the hostname using the admin panel, however I do not know how I can simply remove the current host domain and change the server to use the one remaining account. There are multipl IP addresses, the shared IP being the one I want to remove with the active domain already being on it's own and vnet 0:1 - the vps is setup for venet0:0.

I am also concerned regarding the DNS, as I won't be using the domain name that has the nameserver DNS linked to it I am worried that the active business domain will suffer downtime - does the domain have to be hosted or as it's been setup for a number of years with my registrar will it just continue? My thoughts are that I really ought to add nameserver tags to the active domain and just use that. What would you do?

Obviously I just want to keep my main domain up and running with no DNS downtime while i make the changes and as long as that one part it OK I don't mind changing nameservers or similar to just set the server up as using the one solo account. I also have access to a free DNS service at Cloudns that if i can figure out I believe allows me to host a domain as a nameserver.

Regards
Leigh

 

[bunglehaze]

Just as a chance to get ahead of things. I setup my active business domain with ns1.domain & ns2.domain and pointed it to the dedicated IP address I have on the server. Hopefully if I get a bit of advice on here that reassures me it's relatively simple I can switch it all around with no downtime as the new ns1&ns2 are propagated.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill and is there a dead simple way to just change the domains over to lose the not required hostname account for the vps?

 

[cPanelLauren]

Hello,

The server actually needs to have a separate hostname from any domain on it. The hostname also doesn't need it's own account. Technically you could have something like domain.com as your hosted domain/account and then add server.domain.com as the hostname - in this case you wouldn't need two separate domain names. The hostname should always be in the format sub.example.com though and shouldn't exist as anything else on the server.

As far as changing the nameservers go:

Just as a chance to get ahead of things. I setup my active business domain with ns1.domain & ns2.domain and pointed it to the dedicated IP address I have on the server. Hopefully if I get a bit of advice on here that reassures me it's relatively simple I can switch it all around with no downtime as the new ns1&ns2 are propagated.

If you've created new nameservers, registered them with your registrar and pointed them to the server as long as they're propagated you should be able to modify the nameservers of your domain to the new ones, allow time for propagation again, then once that's complete remove the old ones entirely. This should not cause any downtime.

 

[bunglehaze]

Hello,

The server actually needs to have a separate hostname from any domain on it. The hostname also doesn't need it's own account. Technically you could have something like domain.com as your hosted domain/account and then add server.domain.com as the hostname - in this case you wouldn't need two separate domain names. The hostname should always be in the format sub.example.com though and shouldn't exist as anything else on the server.

As far as changing the nameservers go:



If you've created new nameservers, registered them with your registrar and pointed them to the server as long as they're propagated you should be able to modify the nameservers of your domain to the new ones, allow time for propagation again, then once that's complete remove the old ones entirely. This should not cause any downtime.

Thanks Lauren, so you are saying that if my active domain is domain.com I can just change the hostname as host.domain.com and delete the account in the backend that is from my original hostname of olddomain.com. I see a few settings for the venet and IP for the server being different to the dedicated ones for the active domain so i can just change venet 0:0 to 0:1 and the IP to the dedicated IP and it should just keep running fine?

I assume that my mail settings (currently mail.olddomain.com would just then change to mail.domain.com

I must admit, i am incredibly frustrated with the server hosts who are refusing the assist. it's been a number of years since I had my own servers and I paid for managed service to avoid needing to do things like this.