Proper DNS initial configuration on dedicated server

[ukaszZ]

Hi!
First-time user of PLESK (cPanel/WHM before).
I am a web designer/developer with side-business of hosting my-client's sites
Not much of a technical wizard - would really appreciate some help on proper DNS setup.

I have purchased dedicated server from OVH:
ns394256.ovh.net
IP: 37.59.0.44
System (OS): centos6-plesk11_64
Bits: 64
Two additional IP Failovers - 188.165.17.162 , 188.165.17.173

My problem is - I want my domain studioZ2.com to be a main domain for the server and to set it up to use it as name servers:
ns1.studioz2.com with 188.165.17.162, and
ns2.studioz2.com 188.165.17.173

Please advise me on how to setup DNS correctly for above-mentioned domain.

PS: please forgive my low expertise on this topic - fast learner though, would obey an expert's advice.

Regards
Lukas

 

[ukaszZ]

Any help please?

 

[DaveKay]

Hi Lucus,

Firstly, head over to your domain registrar and setup Glue Records for the domain. These are records that define your Name Server addresses and are records that are held by your TLD parent nameservers.

Use something like the following:
ns1.studioZ2.com (188.165.17.162)
ns2.studioZ2.com (188.165.17.173)

You'll need to create at least two records. Your domain registrar may need to set these up for you, depending on how advanced their control panel is.

Once you've done this, set the name servers of the domain to whatever your Glue Records are.

You'll also need to create A Records for the above name server records in Plesk under your domains subscription.

If you want your Plesk server to handle DNS for your clients domains, make sure you enable the DNS for each subscription as Master and set the name server records as the two records above. You can define this for all newly created subscriptions using the Tools & Settings > DNS Template Settings.

That should be it really. Propagation may take up to 72 hours so you might not see the change instantly.

You can use tools such as www.intodns.com to test your configuration, and if you have any issues that you don't understand, post the messages back here and someone should be able to advise!

In regards to using your domain as the server default, this is selected under Tools & Settings > IP Address Management > Default Site.

This setting is used to define which site is served to people using the IP address to access the server.

Hope this helps!

 

[ukaszZ]

So - for anybody with the same problem - the solution is like this:

1. Setup with your domain registrar "glue records" for your main domain (which you want to use as nameserver) - it can take few hours - up to 48h:
"Hi! Please set glue records for my YourMainDomain.com domain as this ns1.YourMainDomain.com with 123.123.123.111 & ns2.YourMainDomain.com with 123.123.123.222"
2. In PLESK panel - creat subscription for this domain.
3. In PLESK panel - in YourMainDomain.com configuration panel - set DNS records for this domain as this:
ns1.YourMainDomain.com. A 123.123.123.111
ns2.YourMainDomain.com. A 123.123.123.222
YourMainDomain.com. NS ns1.YourMainDomain.com.
YourMainDomain.com. NS ns2.YourMainDomain.com.
123.123.123.111 / 24 PTR YourMainDomain.com
4. In PLESK panel - in main server setting - configure your DNS template to reflect those above setup - without PTR record (this PTR set only for your main domain).

That's quite it. The problem for me was the glue record setting - I wasn't aware of it as newbie .

I recomend this source (little longish and overloaded, but quite helpful): h t t p ://www.cymru1.net/linux-vps/vps-hints-and-tips.php

 

[ukaszZ]

Solution

Please click one of the So - for anybody with the same problem - the solution is like this:

1. Setup with your domain registrar "glue records" for your main domain (which you want to use as nameserver) - it can take few hours - up to 48h:
"Hi! Please set glue records for my YourMainDomain.com domain as this ns1.YourMainDomain.com with 123.123.123.111 & ns2.YourMainDomain.com with 123.123.123.222"
2. In PLESK panel - creat subscription for this domain.
3. In PLESK panel - in YourMainDomain.com configuration panel - set DNS records for this domain as this:
ns1.YourMainDomain.com. A 123.123.123.111
ns2.YourMainDomain.com. A 123.123.123.222
YourMainDomain.com. NS ns1.YourMainDomain.com.
YourMainDomain.com. NS ns2.YourMainDomain.com.
123.123.123.111 / 24 PTR YourMainDomain.com
4. In PLESK panel - in main server setting - configure your DNS template to reflect those above setup - without PTR record (this PTR set only for your main domain).

That's quite it. The problem for me was the glue record setting - I wasn't aware of it as newbie .

I recomend this source (little longish and overloaded, but quite helpful):
h t t p ://www.cymru1.net/linux-vps/vps-hints-and-tips.php

Thank you all for your input. Regards.

 

[DaveKay]

Unless you own and look after your own IP Address (unlikely) there isn't a need to include a PTR Record in your Plesk DNS records.

PTR Records are used for ReverseDNS Lookups and should be managed by your HOST/ISP/IP Address owner.

Most dedicated/vps providers will create a PTR record if you ask them.

It won't do any harm having PTR records in Plesk - just a little pointless!

But, apart from that everything else is correct and should enable you to run your own NameServers.

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_DNS_lookup for more info.

It's important to have correct PTR (rDNS Records) for your IP addresses. If you don't, it can cause issues with SMTP servers identifying email sent from your server as spam.

 

[JamBan]

I have a similar issue with this.

I used to have my WP site hosted with CloudNext, but the service was poor. So i brought a VPS from strato a couple of weeks ago and ive been trying to configure it since.

The only thing I have done at cloudnext is change the two name servers to:

ns2.whycrm.co.uk. ['85.214.236.250']
ns1.whycrm.co.uk. ['85.214.236.250']

... the IPs being the server address from Strato.

The subsription is setup in Parallels Plesk and the server acts as the primary server for this domain.

I also used http://www.intodns.com/whycrm.co.uk but as a novice, i dont understand what the errors mean.
Can anyone help?

 

[DaveKay]

Have you also defined your Nameservers by creating NS records within your Plesk DNS Config.

EDIT: Have you followed the above instructions eg Created Glue Records with your Domain registrar?

 

[JamBan]

Have you also defined your Nameservers by creating NS records within your Plesk DNS Config.

EDIT: Have you followed the above instructions eg Created Glue Records with your Domain registrar?

Yes I have, I think the issue could be, the name servers require two IP addresses. I have only been supplied with one IP address for my Strato server. So, I just configured both ns1 and ns2 with the same IP on the registrar side.

Weirdly, when I bought the server, I bought another domain with it. When I check the DNS using a lookup tool, it has two different IP addresses.....and somehow they both point to the hosting on the strato server. (but neither of these IP addresses is the same as the IP address of my server)

Im confused.

 

[DaveKay]

Yes I have, I think the issue could be, the name servers require two IP addresses. I have only been supplied with one IP address for my Strato server. So, I just configured both ns1 and ns2 with the same IP on the registrar side.

Although interweb standards state that you should have at least two Name Servers, this is really only for redundancy and your site/server will work with just the one Nameserver IP resolving from Nameserver records.

Weirdly, when I bought the server, I bought another domain with it. When I check the DNS using a lookup tool, it has two different IP addresses.....and somehow they both point to the hosting on the strato server. (but neither of these IP addresses is the same as the IP address of my server)

From what you say here, I presume it means that the Nameservers for your second domain are set as your domain registrars rather than your server.

Can you post a screen grab / PM a screengrab to me so that I can check your DNS Config. As long as you have fully followed the instructions in post #3 above, everything should in theory be working ok.

 

[inado1]

Plesk users have to beware of the default DNS master template. I see there is one entry with ns.<domain>
However we don't have one nameserver per domain. Users have to delete this entry and replace it with two entries:
NS ns1.yournameserver.com and
NS ns2.yournameserver.com

Any other entries with ns as prefix should be deleted. I say it so because i first kept the default ns.<mydomain> entry of plesk. So it means that it created a ns entry for each domain, making believe that every website has a domain name. like Ip of my web server | NS | ns.myfirstwebsite.com / ip of my web server | NS | ns.mysecondwebsite.com and so on... Those entries should be replaced by ns1.yournameserver.tld & ns2.yournameserver.tld

In each addon domain you should see:
Ip of your web server | NS | ns1.yournameserver.com
IP of your webserver | NS | ns2.yournameserver.com

So that every new domain will get those two entries when they are created. This should be reflected for every domain DNS settings.

In the DNS settings from the master domain (the name server), there would be only two additional entries that other domains will not have.
ns1 A IP of name server
ns2 A IP of name server

 

[JamBan]

Plesk users have to beware of the default DNS master template. I see there is one entry with ns.<domain>
However we don't have one nameserver per domain. Users have to delete this entry and replace it with two entries:
NS ns1.yournameserver.com and
NS ns2.yournameserver.com

Any other entries with ns as prefix should be deleted. I say it so because i first kept the default ns.<mydomain> entry of plesk. So it means that it created a ns entry for each domain, making believe that every website has a domain name. like Ip of my web server | NS | ns.myfirstwebsite.com / ip of my web server | NS | ns.mysecondwebsite.com and so on... Those entries should be replaced by ns1.yournameserver.tld & ns2.yournameserver.tld

In each addon domain you should see:
Ip of your web server | NS | ns1.yournameserver.com
IP of your webserver | NS | ns2.yournameserver.com

So that every new domain will get those two entries when they are created. This should be reflected for every domain DNS settings.

In the DNS settings from the master domain (the name server), there would be only two additional entries that other domains will not have.
ns1 A IP of name server
ns2 A IP of name server

Thanks for your help. I have been in touch with Strato support and it turns out that I cannot point a domain to a strato server by just using the two nameservers approach. I have to do this via changing the A records on the registrar side.

Which is a shame, as that is supposed to be the easiest way!

Im currently searching for documentation as to which dns records I have to change in order to get the hosting to work on the Strato server side. If anyone has any great documentation for this, that would be much appreciated! Thanks.

 

[GustavoL]

Hello

I'm have some plesk servers (plesk10.4) . I want 2 dns servers

sample: ns1.domainame.com, ns2.domainame.com

What you recomend ?

----------
Best Regards

 

[inado1]

it depends gustavol, if your name servers will be hosted on your web server with your plesk or in different name servers.
If it s on your web server. Look at my DNS template that i use now.
If you have two IP addresses for your web server enter both of them.
remove the ns<domain> entry
apply it the DNS template & override the exist DNS

 

[GustavoL]

Hello Inado1

I want use 2 more servers to work as dns servers , but I don't know what software use on it , what you recomend?

Best Regards

 

[inado1]

Gustavol,

1. if you have a plesk license on other servers. You can use plesk as nameserver only. you will setup once again your main domain name on those & recreate dns zones on the other nameservers.

or

1. you can use BIND it is free & open source isg.org
2. then if you need a GUI look at ISC BIND GUI in youtube


[/QUOTE]