Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : How can I improve my NS setup?

[s_mack]

Hi. I've had my own website for eons, but something about DNS has always managed to elude me. Its never been a problem (until last night), but whenever I use a DNS check tool (like intodns.com) it warns me that my two nameservers are on the same block/machine/whatever and it represents a single point of failure. But EVERY shared host I have EVER been with just provides two nameservers and I always get that warning.

Well, last night... the servers went down (THANKS SEMOWEB.COM) and with absolutely no redundancy... my website and (worse) email was completely MIA. Those emails all went into oblivion with no way to get them back.

How to I prevent this in the future? Switch hosts? Sure... but its always the same warning no matter what host I've ever tried.

Can I add, for example, ns3.some_google_service_i_never_heard_about.com and ns4.third_party_nameservers.com to get some redundancy in case of a failure like this?

I switched my email to google's servers in hopes of not relying on SEMOWEB.COM for my email... but when the nameservers failed, that did me no good.

Thanks.

- Steven

[s_mack]

I'm starting to have a sneaking suspiscion that over all these years... I've just always had crappy hosts that didn't know how to setup their NS. Am I right?

[Zachary Nelson]

Originally Posted by s_mack

Hi. I've had my own website for eons, but something about DNS has always managed to elude me. Its never been a problem (until last night), but whenever I use a DNS check tool (like intodns.com) it warns me that my two nameservers are on the same block/machine/whatever and it represents a single point of failure. But EVERY shared host I have EVER been with just provides two nameservers and I always get that warning.

Well, last night... the servers went down (THANKS SEMOWEB.COM) and with absolutely no redundancy... my website and (worse) email was completely MIA. Those emails all went into oblivion with no way to get them back.

How to I prevent this in the future? Switch hosts? Sure... but its always the same warning no matter what host I've ever tried.

Can I add, for example, ns3.some_google_service_i_never_heard_about.com and ns4.third_party_nameservers.com to get some redundancy in case of a failure like this?

I switched my email to google's servers in hopes of not relying on SEMOWEB.COM for my email... but when the nameservers failed, that did me no good.

Thanks.

- Steven

Originally Posted by s_mack

I'm starting to have a sneaking suspiscion that over all these years... I've just always had crappy hosts that didn't know how to setup their NS. Am I right?

Basically, IntoDNS is warning you that both the name servers for your domains are hosted on the same server. Thus, if that server goes down your name servers go down and people may not be able to resolve your site.

To fix this, you should have at minimum 2, but a recommended 3 name servers in geographically diverse locations. Either a good host can manage this, or there are a number of free and paid name server services out there. CloudFlare comes to mind.

Indeed, when you switched your MX records to Google Apps, the records were still hosted with semoweb, and thus went offline. I would investigate a different host, and when doing so ask them about their name server setups.

[s_mack]

you mentioned cloudflare... so I went to cloudflare.com - is that what you intended? That looks neat, but not really a nameserver service... more of a website-torrent-style-hybrid-thingy

[fshagan]

You have been on lousy hosts. I have never had a host with their name servers on the same server. Heck, even my little hosting-for-family-and-friends-part-time-hobby-business-hosting-company has name servers on different subnets. I spend $15 a year for a separate VPS to host one of my name servers.

I have my main VPS at MDDHosting.com, and I can recommend them for shared hosting from a service / support standpoint.

Or, you could go with a third party DNS solution and keep your current host. The question I always have is ... if this is what they provide for DNS, what other bad practices are lurking beneath the surface, ready to sabotage your site?

[s_mack]

I've Googled the heck out of this and I still can't find a "third party DNS solution" that isn't so bloody convoluted that I can even begin to SUSPECT that it is what I'm looking for. Everything seems to be from the end-user perspective... using DNS for FINDING websites rather than relying on your ISP's DNS. For example, Google's 8.8.8.8 or whatever. What are some examples from the HOST perspective of BEING FOUND??

I am absolutely NOT married to SEMOWEB - in fact, they've failed me so many times at so many levels that I wish I had the time to switch again. They really suck, frankly, but they're cheap and no worse than the last host I had for years (pagezone.com - who still charges my credit card every month and sends me an email daily to update my scripts even though I haven't been with them for over a year) that I paid $25/mo to. I'm hesitant to switch also because I don't trust that "you get what you pay for" and I have no idea who's REALLY any better. I toyed with doing my own VPS but I don't have the time. I have one domain hosted with stablehost and that's been very good in terms of speed and reliability so far (few months) but the spam has been incredible and ultimately my tickets related to that have been ignored.

Anyway, thanks for the MDDhosting suggestion. I'll skeptically check it out

[stablehost]

Originally Posted by s_mack

I've Googled the heck out of this and I still can't find a "third party DNS solution" that isn't so bloody convoluted that I can even begin to SUSPECT that it is what I'm looking for. Everything seems to be from the end-user perspective... using DNS for FINDING websites rather than relying on your ISP's DNS. For example, Google's 8.8.8.8 or whatever. What are some examples from the HOST perspective of BEING FOUND??

I am absolutely NOT married to SEMOWEB - in fact, they've failed me so many times at so many levels that I wish I had the time to switch again. They really suck, frankly, but they're cheap and no worse than the last host I had for years (pagezone.com - who still charges my credit card every month and sends me an email daily to update my scripts even though I haven't been with them for over a year) that I paid $25/mo to. I'm hesitant to switch also because I don't trust that "you get what you pay for" and I have no idea who's REALLY any better. I toyed with doing my own VPS but I don't have the time. I have one domain hosted with stablehost and that's been very good in terms of speed and reliability so far (few months) but the spam has been incredible and ultimately my tickets related to that have been ignored.

Anyway, thanks for the MDDhosting suggestion. I'll skeptically check it out

Please PM me your ticket numbers so I can investigate why you feel we're ignoring you.

[JamesOakley]

Originally Posted by s_mack

I've Googled the heck out of this and I still can't find a "third party DNS solution" that isn't so bloody convoluted that I can even begin to SUSPECT that it is what I'm looking for. Everything seems to be from the end-user perspective... using DNS for FINDING websites rather than relying on your ISP's DNS. For example, Google's 8.8.8.8 or whatever. What are some examples from the HOST perspective of BEING FOUND??

I am absolutely NOT married to SEMOWEB - in fact, they've failed me so many times at so many levels that I wish I had the time to switch again. They really suck, frankly, but they're cheap and no worse than the last host I had for years (pagezone.com - who still charges my credit card every month and sends me an email daily to update my scripts even though I haven't been with them for over a year) that I paid $25/mo to. I'm hesitant to switch also because I don't trust that "you get what you pay for" and I have no idea who's REALLY any better. I toyed with doing my own VPS but I don't have the time. I have one domain hosted with stablehost and that's been very good in terms of speed and reliability so far (few months) but the spam has been incredible and ultimately my tickets related to that have been ignored.

Anyway, thanks for the MDDhosting suggestion. I'll skeptically check it out

No need to be sceptical about MDDhosting - they're good.

It doesn't sound like you need a third-party DNS hosting service. You need a web host who will provide you with at least two properly distinct nameservers. At the very least, they need to be two separate machines, better still on entirely different networks in different locations.

Whenever you sign up with a new host, you should ask them a question or two before signing up. Asking how independent their DNS servers are from each other, and from their hosting servers, would be a good pre-sales question. And you could do a lot worse than giving MDDHosting a look.

[MyLabuan]

Originally Posted by s_mack

Can I add, for example, ns3.some_google_service_i_never_heard_about.com and ns4.third_party_nameservers.com to get some redundancy in case of a failure like this?

I switched my email to google's servers in hopes of not relying on SEMOWEB.COM for my email... but when the nameservers failed, that did me no good.

Use DNS Hosting :
- You can point your website to different server and your email on different server ( example using google mail )

Use Backup Mail Server
- If your main domain cannot accessible, your email will be re-route to backup mail and will automatically push back to your main server once the service back to normal.

Either one above will safe you from loosing all your email...

[Zachary Nelson]

CloudFlare is a DNS service.

https://www.cloudflare.com/faqs.html

Among other things.

[Zachary Nelson]

Originally Posted by MyLabuan

Use Backup Mail Server
- If your main domain cannot accessible, your email will be re-route to backup mail and will automatically push back to your main server once the service back to normal.

Either one above will safe you from loosing all your email...

His issue is not with the mail server, perhaps you mis-understood.

The DNS that he has is MX records hosted on went offline, so mail wasn't being routed anywhere and was dropped. He needs an alternate DNS solution not an alternate mail solution.

[MyITGuy]

If you are a reseller, then you should utilize the DNS Cluster functionality of cPanel (Assuming this is the portal your using). You can link two or more servers to each other, or you can setup the cPanel DNS Only package on a VPS or small dedicated server.

Additionally, if your using cPanel its my understanding that they are beginning to integrate with third party for clustered DNS (vps.net)

If you're an end user, then you can use your registars nameservers assuming they offer DNS Management, or CloudFlare as suggested by others

[plumsauce]

Check with the help pages of your domain registrar. They may provide dns services as part of the domain registration. The caveat is that with godaddy, they have a new policy of dropping queries on high volume.

[s_mack]

Thanks everyone. OK, I get that semoweb just has their DNS setup crappy... and I should have asked before signing up. And switching to a host that does it better should resolve that. But I don't think I can really be comfortable with any host long term. Page-zone was great... while they were great. Then Jim died or got drunk or whatever happened (completely 100% MIA except for the continued billing) and I was left up shyte creek. That's partially why I offloaded my email to Google and I'd like to now do the same sort of thing with DNS. If I can wrap my feeble head around it.

I looked at cloudflare but they really seem to be focused more on performance... as far as stability goes, I'm not sure the benefit is really there. They cache my site - great. If it were a static site I suppose I'd be happy with that. But being dynamic, I imagine it creates more headaches than it solves. I've read several complaints where people see old information even on static pages and get cached results when the webserver is up, etc.

I just want to be able to go to my registrar, click "nameservers" and add a couple more on there in case the host's nameservers fail like they did yesterday. Is there not a service out there for this purpose?

[s_mack]

found buddyns.com looks good