Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Question about Private DNS for VPS

[cstaleys]

I am new to VPS and have some questions about private DNS for a VPS.

I've been told it's not too smart to have your private DNS on the same VPS that hosts your websites (in case the entire VPS has trouble).

Q: Does the private DNS have to be on the same server network as your VPS? Ie: If I have my VPS on... oh... let's say JaguarPC, does my private DNS have to be located on that same network -OR- could I have a private DNS on GoDaddy which serves my VPS on JagaurPC?

(Obviously, I don't understand how a private DNS works or I wouldn't be asking this question)

Thanks!

[Jumbuck]

This is an excellent question. I too am no expert so would be very interested in what answers you get. It appears this particular subject is not covered in any depth anywhere.

Cheers

[slhost]

Originally Posted by cstaleys

I am new to VPS and have some questions about private DNS for a VPS.

I've been told it's not too smart to have your private DNS on the same VPS that hosts your websites (in case the entire VPS has trouble).

Q: Does the private DNS have to be on the same server network as your VPS? Ie: If I have my VPS on... oh... let's say JaguarPC, does my private DNS have to be located on that same network -OR- could I have a private DNS on GoDaddy which serves my VPS on JagaurPC?

(Obviously, I don't understand how a private DNS works or I wouldn't be asking this question)

Thanks!

You are not required to have your DNS server on the same network where your files are served from. You can use Godaddy's nameservers if you wish, use another 3rd party DNS provider, or you can even run another DNS only server elsewhere.

[spiritedone]

but what is the point? if you expect to have server problems with a VPS, then you should probably find a different company... (be careful who you pick, read all the reviews.... if you don't find many review, do not choose the company, i learned that the hard way)

[turbowarp]

I use my VPS as the primary or master and my secondary or slaves are offsite. This way, admin of the zone is pretty much automated by the admin panel on the VPS.

I use a service www.everydns.net as the secondary. Everydns has dns servers around the world ... San Jose, San Diego, the Netherlands, and DC. Or you could use them as the primary and secondary.

They work great for me and I have been happily using them since 2001. Before that I used secondary.com which became ultradns.com and they got expensive.

I also use http://www.opendns.com/ as my dns resolver rather than rely on my isp.

There are several other outsource dns services.

BTW, do you know if you mail is safe from failover if your VPS becomes inaccessible?

--

[edu4vision]

Does by setting DNS with the other parties mean giving them the IP?

Let me rephrase the question:

If I want to register the DNS with NameCheap, I must click the "NameServer Registration" and add IP address along side it. Is it this way?

Then how about if I want to change CNAME, A Record etc?

Can someone clarify and guide? (if kindly enough, can you tell me how to do it with NameCheap?)

Can we put it like this:

Primary DNS (Our VPS)
Secondary DNS (Our VPS-same, just different IP)
Third DNS (Domain Registrar)
Fourth DNS (EveryDNS)

Can this be done?

Thanks

[macooper]

Running DNS somewhere other than on your VPS is a good idea if you have a large network of machines depending on that DNS. You should then also have multiple DNS servers in seperate data centers.
But here, aren't we talking about a few sites running on a single VPS ? So what is the point ? I mean if your VPS falls over, having DNS up on another machine won't make any differance to your VPS, it will be down anyway, as will your sites.

If your going to go do things this way, shouldn't you also look at having remote offsite backups, run mysql on a seperate server, run a secondary MX for your mailserver (somewhere for the spammers to send their junk if nothing else, anyone who has had a secondary MX will know what I mean), the list goes on.

Don't let me put you off, but you are simply making the managing of your DNS more difficult for no gain at all if you are reliant on a single VPS to run your site, so why waste the time doing it ?

[turbowarp]

You might want to drop down to the Domain Name Forum for more specifics.

But, yes, basically you have to register your vps with your registrar as a DNS Nameserver and provide the ip's. You also need to update the nameservers so that the world will know what nameservers (Primary and Secondaries) to query for your domain.

The zone records would need to be defined on the primary nameserver, probably your vps. Any secondaries you use will automatically poll for your dns data from the primary.

Also ask your vps host to do a PTR or reverse dns entry for you.

[slicematt]

I think having a secondary nameserver offsite is a great plan. But ultimately it depends, we have several people using free DNS (mainly their registrar), several paying at various places and some getting ready to use ours.