Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Domain Names : Redundant DNS?

[Ivraatiems]

Hi all,

I've got a couple of sites who handle DNS through one of my VPSes, but are themselves hosted on a separate VPS. Over the weekend that VPS went offline due to a power outage - one of its first outages ever - and my sites became inaccessible because the DNS stopped resolving.

I'd like to keep primary DNS control at this main VPS, since it's usually quite reliable and I am confident the provider isn't going anywhere - but what can I do as far as redundancy to ensure that if my nameservers stop resolving, I can quickly and easily start routing traffic again?

Thanks!

[relichost]

Hi

Are you using a control panel like cpanel ? if so you can cluster nameservers together on different VPS's

Thanks

[Ivraatiems]

Hey,

I have cPanel on my main DNS host - but not on any of my other servers. Will that suffice?

[infinitnet]

Get "cPanel DNS ONLY": http://cpanel.net/products/cpanelwhm...-software.html

Install and conifgure it on a second VPS on another host system: http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/vie...nfigureCluster and/or http://abusedcompetence.com/2011/07/...server-part-1/

[Ivraatiems]

Sweet! Now, it does say "cPanel DNS ONLY should only be installed on dedicated physical nameservers with no previous content on them." - does that mean DNS content, or will I really need a whole separate VPS that only does DNS? The other VPS affected by this mostly serves webpages with Apache/mysql/php; that's the one I'd want to put the backup DNS on.

[infinitnet]

Well, I'd create a full backup of the VPS first and then try, so you can restore it in case anything goes wrong. I don't think it will mess up your current setup though.

[astutiumRob]

One option (if you're only going to offer Cpanel Hosting is a separate VPS with Cpanel-DNS-Only

Alternatively, get a 2ndary DNS service and you dont need the VPS, or have to worry about scaling, managing, securing etc

Or better yet, a full DNS Hosting service, which can automatically pull the zones by AXFR from your cpanel server(s), which will allow you to simplify your support (only have to ever give people a known set of nameservers irrespective of how many servers you grow to) and reliability (not impacted by any of your VPS being offline) etc