I am trying to decide whether I want my new host to host my DNS or whether I should just do it within Plesk. My concern is as follows and I would like your thoughts on this.

I will have 3 sites on this server but I am limited 40GB of bandwith, however I am not sure how much I am going to generate. I am wondering if the DNS lookups will use up a bunch of bandwith of mine that could be used for actual web traffic rather than DNS lookups. My main site tops about 300,000 page views to the front of the site.

I have also read that it is better to not run both nameservers on each server which is really my only choice since I only have one. This will require two ips and then I have to go register at a registar. I understand the drawbacks of hosting it on the same server, if it goes down then no one will be able to get to my site. Thoughts on hosting nameservers together?


Also, is there a site where I can learn the basics and advanced knowledge of running a DNS server.

Thanks

DNS queries don't use much bandwidth. 300,000 page views will probably use up 60 MB of DNS bandwidth at the most. If you only have one server, there's no point in having two different physical DNS servers, because if the server is down, the site will be down anyway.

correct - dns doesn't eat a lot of bandwidth.

You should visit

http://www.granitecanyon.com/

where you can set-up a free secondary DNS service for your domain... (You may also consider http://www.zoneedit.com they offer free DNS service as well - see their service rules). Hope this helps

Originally posted by ToastyX
If you only have one server, there's no point in having two different physical DNS servers, because if the server is down, the site will be down anyway.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't it be wise to have a secondary DNS somewheres else so mail would still get routed to the proper place (backup mail spool)?

Regards,

Jeff

Originally posted by Jeffyt
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't it be wise to have a secondary DNS somewheres else so mail would still get routed to the proper place (backup mail spool)?
You are correct, but what if there is no backup mail server? If there is a backup mail server, host the secondary DNS off of that. :)

Even with just one server, the advatage to having a seperate DNS is in case the configuration of that one DNS gets messed up and it isn't running (or isn't running properly). I did that once and didn't notice until a couple hours later, and if it wasn't for the fact that I have secondary (and tertiary) DNS on another location, the ability to access the site by name would've been down, even through the rest of the server was up.

You should treat a DNS daemon process the same as you would an http or ftp one: if it goes down for any reason, you should be notified or it should restart itself by self-checking scripts.

That's how I look at things, anyway. :)

I hadn't gotten around to setting up monitoring for it, and it couldn't restart itself (I messed up in the configuration and it wouldn't start), it was completely user error (me), but I like that backup for those cases where I'm forgetful (which can happen at times, especially if I'm in a rush).