Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : dedicated dns servers or no?

[bigdessert]

Background:

Right now I have two vps's, one from wiredtree and one from servint. I have my hosting accounts split between them. my wiredtree vps is ns1 and my servint vps is ns2. I of course have clustering setup for dns.

I was thinking the other day that maybe I should get a couple more really small vps's to run cpanel DNSonly. I was thinking of picking up a couple of $5 vps's very small as all they will be doing is dns hosting.

Question:

Should I stay with how my current setup is and forget the cheapo vps's for dns or would it be better to get two $5 vps's and put dns on them and make them the primary nameservers?

[[JSH]John]

Having dedicated DNS servers is a great idea, it will also take some load off your VPS's.

If you are going to get two cheap VPS's I would recommend getting them from a reliable provider. If your DNS servers go down, then so do all websites hosted on your servers.

DNSCluster.co.uk currently have a special offer, and their parent company Open Source Hosting Solutions have been around for a while, so you could take a look at them: http://www.dnscluster.co.uk/

[bigdessert]

But if I have cheap vps's at two different datacenters and ns1 goes down, doesn't ns2 just pick up the slack?

[IGXHost]

We've ran a DNS Cluster with cPanel DNS only before. We definitely did not use the higher-end VPSes. We configured our DNS over 4 different low-end VPSes (each with 128 - 256mb RAM) and it did fine. Just make sure the VPSes you get are on different networks, facilities, and providers. It's unlikely that all 4 will go down simultaneously. By going with several cheap VPSes you'll end up saving a lot of money.

And yes, if one of your VPS goes down the other should pick it up. You should try to have at least 3 or 4 VPSes if you're going for low-end boxes.

[dyna!]

It might be just cheaper and in the end better to go with a 3rd party DNS service provider.

[plumsauce]

Originally Posted by dyna!

It might be just cheaper and in the end better to go with a 3rd party DNS service provider.

True.

It might be a toss-up in dollars, but once you factor in management time and complexity, the scales could tip heavily in favour of a specialist approach.

Why spend hours every month on an ancillary service when there are packaged solutions available?

[Ankheg]

Go for the extra DNS servers. $10/mo is a small price to pay for a fault-tolerant setup you have full control over.

Just make sure they're as far away from one another as is practical, in terms of geography, et cetera. (We became kind of gunshy about this after the Great Blackout of 2003.)

DNS servers use minimal resources; it's not implausible you can find another use for the VPSes, as well - backup space, secondary MX, et cetera - if you're having a hard time justifying investing $10/mo in, you know, something that's only the most critical and under-rated internet service.

[webangel_ie]

There are also free dns providers like afraid.org that can host your secondary(trietary and so on) dns

[suhailc]

Originally Posted by bigdessert

Background:

Right now I have two vps's, one from wiredtree and one from servint. I have my hosting accounts split between them. my wiredtree vps is ns1 and my servint vps is ns2. I of course have clustering setup for dns.

I was thinking the other day that maybe I should get a couple more really small vps's to run cpanel DNSonly. I was thinking of picking up a couple of $5 vps's very small as all they will be doing is dns hosting.

Question:

Should I stay with how my current setup is and forget the cheapo vps's for dns or would it be better to get two $5 vps's and put dns on them and make them the primary nameservers?

It can get messy when using your hosting servers as part of the DNS cluster setup. Best practice is to really have your DNS cluster hosted on external servers. Will help in many ways including reducing server loads, and if you intend on growing your business and hope to one day have multiple servers, it's worth getting it all setup now.