Results 1 to 21 of 21
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    554

    Using the same nameservers with two hosting accounts, possible?

    I have a shared cPanel account and a VPS account with cPanel.

    I'd like to put my main business website on the shared account.

    I'd like to put my customer's website on the VPS account.

    How do I go about using the same nameservers for both accounts?


    Ideally, for extra protection, I'd like to host my main site on a different server in a different data center. This way, if my VPS goes down, my customers can still contact me.

    Now would the best route be a DNS cluster or should I just make multiple name servers (ns1/ns2/ns3/ns4)?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Indiana, USA
    Posts
    19,178
    You could just use the VPS for all DNS (even for your domain) which would allow you to use the same nameservers for both. The downside is that if the VPS is down, so will the DNS for your primary domain even if the server itself is online.
    Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,800 websites since 2007.
    Ultra-Fast Cloud Shared and Pay-By-Use Reseller Hosting Powered by LiteSpeed!
    cPanel • Free SSL • 100% Uptime SLA • 24/7 Support
    Class-leading support that responds in minutes, not days.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2001
    Location
    Paradise
    Posts
    12,052
    You can use clustered DNS.
    Shared Web Hosting - Reseller Hosting - Semi-Dedicated Servers - SolusVM/XEN VPS
    LiteSpeed Powered - R1Soft Continuous Data Protection - 24/7 Chat/Email/Helpdesk Support
    Cpanel/WHM - Softaculous - R1soft Backup - Litespeed - Cloudlinux -Site Builder- SSH support - Account Migration
    DowntownHost LLC - In Business since 2001- West/Center/East USA - Netherlands - Singapore

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    554
    Quote Originally Posted by MikeDVB View Post
    The downside is that if the VPS is down, so will the DNS for your primary domain even if the server itself is online.
    Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? I'd like my main website to stay online if the VPS fails.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Indiana, USA
    Posts
    19,178
    Quote Originally Posted by WHU-Mike View Post
    Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? I'd like my main website to stay online if the VPS fails.
    Indeed, which is why I wouldn't do it that way
    Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,800 websites since 2007.
    Ultra-Fast Cloud Shared and Pay-By-Use Reseller Hosting Powered by LiteSpeed!
    cPanel • Free SSL • 100% Uptime SLA • 24/7 Support
    Class-leading support that responds in minutes, not days.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    554
    Quote Originally Posted by MikeDVB View Post
    Indeed, which is why I wouldn't do it that way
    Ok...
    So basically, I would need an additional VPS server that caters towards DNS Clustering only?

  7. #7
    Static pages : Two VPS with cPanel (Synchronize DNS Records).

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    .INdiana
    Posts
    2,465
    why not just use different nameservers for the one special site. (your main business site).
    Sneaky Little Hobbitses

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    554
    Quote Originally Posted by CD Burnt View Post
    why not just use different nameservers for the one special site. (your main business site).
    Thats what I was asking in my original post. Would it be possible to just make the shared account ns1.nameserver.com ns2.nameserver.com

    and the vps account ns3.nameserver.com ns4.nameserver.com

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Posts
    544
    WHU-Mike;

    You may want to look at 3rd party DNS. In any case http://freedns.afraid.org/ may provide some free education.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    .INdiana
    Posts
    2,465
    Quote Originally Posted by WHU-Mike View Post
    Thats what I was asking in my original post. Would it be possible to just make the shared account ns1.nameserver.com ns2.nameserver.com

    and the vps account ns3.nameserver.com ns4.nameserver.com

    you could ask the shared provider if using private nameservers are allowed.

    then set up ns3/ns4 for the business site, and set up ns1/ns2 for your customers on the vps.
    Sneaky Little Hobbitses

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    California
    Posts
    2,786
    You can buy an inexpensive VPS to use as a name server in addition to your existing VPS, and install cPanel's free "DNSONLY" product on it. I finally got my BuyVM 128/256 $15 per year VPS to install DNSONLY, so I'm doing this now.

    cPanel will easily create a "cluster", syncing the main VPS (hosting your NS1 nameserver, for instance) and the inexpensive VPS (hosting NS2). You can create zone records in WHM on your main VPS without creating accounts for the domains, so you create a zone and an A record that points to any IP address you're using. Including for your account on a shared server, your accounts on your main VPS, or accounts on other servers.

    I'm currently doing this with my main VPS, and the BuyVM $15 a year VPS. Zone files have A records pointing to one of three servers, my main VPS, my BuyVM VPS and a test VPS I have at Burst.net.

    It gives you redundancy in case one of the servers is down (e.g., email is queued instead of bounced), and allows you to change accounts to a different server after a move by editing the A records in WHM (instead of relying on customers changing name servers at their registrar).

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Indiana, USA
    Posts
    19,178
    Quote Originally Posted by WHU-Mike View Post
    Thats what I was asking in my original post. Would it be possible to just make the shared account ns1.nameserver.com ns2.nameserver.com

    and the vps account ns3.nameserver.com ns4.nameserver.com
    That's now how I understood the question, but yes, you can do that.
    Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,800 websites since 2007.
    Ultra-Fast Cloud Shared and Pay-By-Use Reseller Hosting Powered by LiteSpeed!
    cPanel • Free SSL • 100% Uptime SLA • 24/7 Support
    Class-leading support that responds in minutes, not days.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    554
    Quote Originally Posted by fshagan View Post
    You can buy an inexpensive VPS to use as a name server in addition to your existing VPS, and install cPanel's free "DNSONLY" product on it. I finally got my BuyVM 128/256 $15 per year VPS to install DNSONLY, so I'm doing this now.

    cPanel will easily create a "cluster", syncing the main VPS (hosting your NS1 nameserver, for instance) and the inexpensive VPS (hosting NS2). You can create zone records in WHM on your main VPS without creating accounts for the domains, so you create a zone and an A record that points to any IP address you're using. Including for your account on a shared server, your accounts on your main VPS, or accounts on other servers.

    I'm currently doing this with my main VPS, and the BuyVM $15 a year VPS. Zone files have A records pointing to one of three servers, my main VPS, my BuyVM VPS and a test VPS I have at Burst.net.

    It gives you redundancy in case one of the servers is down (e.g., email is queued instead of bounced), and allows you to change accounts to a different server after a move by editing the A records in WHM (instead of relying on customers changing name servers at their registrar).
    So regardless, you have a single point of failure and thats the DNS VPS. What are some ways to combat this?

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Indiana, USA
    Posts
    19,178
    Quote Originally Posted by MikeDVB View Post
    That's now how I understood the question, but yes, you can do that.
    Now should have been not, whoops.
    Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,800 websites since 2007.
    Ultra-Fast Cloud Shared and Pay-By-Use Reseller Hosting Powered by LiteSpeed!
    cPanel • Free SSL • 100% Uptime SLA • 24/7 Support
    Class-leading support that responds in minutes, not days.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    554
    Completely understandable. I should have reworded it better. So can anyone answer my previous question:

    Quote Originally Posted by WHU-Mike View Post
    So regardless, you have a single point of failure and thats the DNS VPS. What are some ways to combat this?

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Indiana, USA
    Posts
    19,178
    Quote Originally Posted by WHU-Mike View Post
    Completely understandable. I should have reworded it better. So can anyone answer my previous question:
    Sure, short of having a secondary system that hosts the DNS as well (i.e. a DNS cluster or DNS mirror) you're going to have a single point of failure for DNS. It's actually not that uncommon. For example, last I checked, Hostgator hosts all nameservers on the same server as the webserver without any clustering. So their NS are ns1000,1001,1002,10003, etc... for servers 500, 501, etc... Now those may not actually line up but the point is that they're not running a huge cluster or anything special and the DNS for each server has that server as a SPOF for the DNS for the hosted domains.
    Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,800 websites since 2007.
    Ultra-Fast Cloud Shared and Pay-By-Use Reseller Hosting Powered by LiteSpeed!
    cPanel • Free SSL • 100% Uptime SLA • 24/7 Support
    Class-leading support that responds in minutes, not days.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    California
    Posts
    2,786
    Quote Originally Posted by WHU-Mike View Post
    So regardless, you have a single point of failure and thats the DNS VPS. What are some ways to combat this?
    No. You set up the main VPS as hosting one name server record, we'll say "ns1" in this case, and "ns2" will be hosted on your small, inexpensive DNS. You don't have a single point of failure. If one VPS goes down, the identical records on the other VPS will respond to requests.

    DNS queries do not go "in order", and either server could be queried first. If that name server does not respond, the request goes to the other name server of record.

    If your main VPS is down, what is the advantage of having a second name server pointing to that non-functional IP address? The advantage is in the type of response sent back to the requester. Instead of being analogous to "sorry, that site doesn't exist", the message is "the site should be there; they must be temporarily down."

    Email sent to a site that has a single point of failure in its DNS is simply bounced ... returned to sender, no forwarding address. Email sent to a site that has a valid DNS pointing to it is held for delivery later. And while the sending server determines how long the email is held for delivery, typical times are 4 to 48 hours.

    For a business, instead of having your email bounced back to the customer with a message that the email address doesn't exist, it is held for delivery. If it isn't delivered in a set number of hours, the customer gets a notice that their email is being delayed, and will be delivered later. That's much better than the customer thinking you have gone out of business because your site, and your email, has disappeared as if it never existed.

    An alternate method is to use a third-party external DNS that provides the same sort of functionality.

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    554
    Quote Originally Posted by fshagan View Post
    An alternate method is to use a third-party external DNS that provides the same sort of functionality.
    Thanks for the feedback everyone.

    Do you mean third party companies? Can you list any?

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    California
    Posts
    2,786
    Quote Originally Posted by WHU-Mike View Post
    Thanks for the feedback everyone.

    Do you mean third party companies? Can you list any?
    DNSmadeEasy.com is one cited here often. Another is OpenDNS.com. You can search on those two to find other threads with mentions of several others.

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    United Kingdom
    Posts
    15
    Yes you can try the clustered DNS.

Similar Threads

  1. Nameservers 2 resellers accounts
    By jaggededge5 in forum Reseller Hosting
    Replies: 7
    Last Post: 08-08-2010, 08:46 AM
  2. Multiple Reseller Accounts and NameServers
    By viaDamo in forum Reseller Hosting
    Replies: 9
    Last Post: 09-22-2009, 03:39 PM
  3. Setting up new accounts with different set of nameservers
    By jumpinjack in forum Hosting Security and Technology
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 05-08-2008, 10:33 AM
  4. hosting nameservers, migrating reseller accounts
    By webmarketing in forum Dedicated Server
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 04-20-2006, 12:52 PM
  5. nameservers in whm accounts
    By streetmedia in forum Dedicated Server
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 12-18-2004, 02:47 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •