Question Plesk and DNS Nameserver: very confused and need help

[coduyon]

I'm a bit confused about the setup and would like to ask if somebody could clarify it. I have inherited domain with PLESK panel. These are my DNS ns records:

https://i.imgur.com/gJ06A6H.png

Right on top of the screenshot I can see "This server acts as a primary nameserver for the DNS zone". In this case shouldn't NS records point to public IP address of the VPS? They don't and really would like to find out why they point to dns.hospedando.com and not to my the VPS public address if the DNS server runs on Plesk.

Another question is about my domain register page. This is a screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/OYxSjZw.png

In green it says "The zone is active". In order to do some testing I added MX with high priority so later I could do a quick nslookup -type=mx mydomain.com to see if it really is active. It turns out that it isn't and it's pointless to add records in there. What if I'd like to make it active so I can add DNS records in there (in domain register page)? I'm asking because in long term I'd like to switch off this VPS but doing it I guess I will lose all my DNS records, so I need to transfer them somewhere else.

 

[Ales]

The above screenshots just mean the both your Plesk server's DNS and your registrar's DNS are configured as if they are serving the DNS records for your domain to the public. This doesn't mean that they actually are.

Perform a whois for the domain and check which DNS are reported in the whois response.

 

[coduyon]

The above screenshots just mean the both your Plesk server's DNS and your registrar's DNS are configured as if they are serving the DNS records for your domain to the public. This doesn't mean that they actually are.

Perform a whois for the domain and check which DNS are reported in the whois response.

The whois response is:

Name Server: DNS.HOSPEDANDO.COM
Name Server: DNS2.HOSPEDANDO.COM

So these are my nameservers for domain. What I don't understand is:

I have access to 2 portals: Hosting (Plesk) and the domain register page. Both have NS records set to the same nameservers and both allow me to create DNS records.However only records I create in Plesk panel are truly registered correctly. The ones I created in the domain register page don't do anything. Is this something that can be considered as normal?

Also, on top of the Plesk panel it says "the server acts as a primary name server for the dns zone". In this case should NS records be pointing to the VPS public IP?

 

[Ales]

Domain registrars main service is to register the domain and, integral to that, to allow you to enter name servers for the domain. In this case, the servers entered through your registrar's interface are dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com.

As an value added service, domain registrars sometimes offer customers to use their DNS for free. If you were to take them up on that, you'd enter their domain servers instead of dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com and after that, the NS records in the registar's interface would become visible over the internet. As it is now, the records there have no effect (actually, as long as you're not using it, I'd recommend disabling the functionality if there's an option for that).

So, if I understand correctly, dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com are not hosted on your Plesk server? But still, if you make a change in the NS records on your Plesk server, the change becomes visible in them?

In this case I can only assume that your Plesk server is acting as a hidden master and dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com act as slaves. In such a configuration, only the slaves are directly used by the visitors of your domain, while the master acts only to propagate the NS records to the slaves.

 

[coduyon]

Domain registrars main service is to register the domain and, integral to that, to allow you to enter name servers for the domain. In this case, the servers entered through your registrar's interface are dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com.

As an value added service, domain registrars sometimes offer customers to use their DNS for free. If you were to take them up on that, you'd enter their domain servers instead of dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com and after that, the NS records in the registar's interface would become visible over the internet. As it is now, the records there have no effect (actually, as long as you're not using it, I'd recommend disabling the functionality if there's an option for that).

So, if I understand correctly, dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com are not hosted on your Plesk server? But still, if you make a change in the NS records on your Plesk server, the change becomes visible in them?

In this case I can only assume that your Plesk server is acting as a hidden master and dns.hospedando.com and dns2.hospedando.com act as slaves. In such a configuration, only the slaves are directly used by the visitors of your domain, while the master acts only to propagate the NS records to the slaves.

Thanks for your time and insights. This is correct, dns.hospedando and dns2.hospendando are not hosted on my Plesk server. I didn't know you can configure hidden dns master and it seems that's why I was so confused about NS and Plesk. I was reading a lot about it but until your post my setup didn't make sense to me and knew there's something I missing On Tuesday I will talk directly to our providers, just to verify it all about DNS hidden master but 99% that you nailed it. Thanks!