How to transfer an external domain to my vServer with Plesk 8.0.1

[coolex]

Hello!

I have a new vServer with Plesk 8.0.1 and want to run some Domains on it. I have already parked some domains in an extern domain robot (no webspace, no content, nothing, only DNS-entries).
Now I want to transfer or make a domain available with new content on my new vServer. What steps do I have to go to make it possible. I know that I have to change some DNS entries, but I don't know which one and where (on my vServer with Plesk or on my domain robot).
So what is important if you want to bring an external domain to your new vServer with Plesk?

Thanks for your answers.

Alex

 

[DCNet_James]

Well your first step is DNS related. You need to decide first off if you're going to handle all of the authoritative DNS for each domain on your plesk server itself or if you're going to keep it with whomever is handling it now. By authoritative DNS I of course mean the DNS servers listed on each domain with the Registrar.

The simple approach is to just keep the DNS with whomever you have now and assuming you have control of the DNS for each domain you would need to setup the appropriate records for plesk.

To do this you'll need to know the IP(s) your server uses. If it has multiple IP's you'll want to identify the primary one and decide if you're going to assign each domain to its own unique IP or if you're going to use a shared IP setup where each domain has the same IP, which in the case of a single IP setup is what you'll have to do.

Now with all of that in mind. You'll need to setup the following hosts within your domain.

Note: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx represents the IP
Note: domain.com represents the domain in question.
The default A record:
domain.com. IN A xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
The CNAME records (nicknames to an A record):
www IN CNAME domain.com.
mail IN CNAME domain.com.
webmail IN CNAME domain.com.
lists IN CNAME domain.com.
ftp IN CNAME domain.com.

The only CNAME's you need for sure that PSA looks for are the webmail and lists records. Obvious by their names one is for the webmail redirect to Horde webmail and lists is for Mailman (mailing list manager). Other notable mentions would be pop, imap, smtp. These are all very common and just for ease of customer understanding by matching the protocol to a hostname.

After all the DNS related setup, you simply just setup the domain within PSA on the IP address you pointed the DNS to for each particular domain.

These are all very basic tasks and knowledge you'll want to understand before even considering running a hosting server of any type, because if you don't understand it, your customers sure won't be patient when they ask you. I would also know and understand Unix command line functions, Unix file systems and learn the layout of Plesk (PSA) within the file system. Sometimes the GUI does not do something or there maybe things you have to do from the command line.

Thanks,
James