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Denis Gomes Franco
Regular Pleskian
Hey everyone, not sure if I should post this under Resources or another thread - admins, feel free to move this post wherever it's more appropriate.
I would like to just write down my experiences on using external DNS services. It's been quite an adventure and I would like to share it with the community in the hopes this will help someone with the same problems. Some of you may have seen my previous posts while working on these issues. So here is the situation:
I run multiple Plesk servers. I undestand Plesk comes with its own DNS server and I could just point all my domains to each server according to where it's hosted, but that would make maintenance problematic in the long run IMO. So I decided early on that I would try to use an external DNS server, so I could have a single set of NS servers hosting all domains without regards to where it's hosted.
So I found the Digital Ocean DNS extension. Looks promising, but there were some shortcomings:
- Digital Ocean limits the number of domains in your account. Sure, it's free so I can't expect much from them. But I had to repeatedly ask them for a domain raise, which they complied happily. I even asked them about paying for the service, which is only fair, but they refused.
- Sometimes things would get out of sync. I would add some record or update something, and it would not get reflected into Digital Ocean. This would also cause problems with Let's Encrypt since it relies on DNS records. Sometimes I would have to "delete" the domain from DO and then add it again. It worked most of the time but sometimes things would get stuck for no apparent reason.
- The extension is way slow if there are lots of domains (over 100 I guess). It would also make it very slow to update DNS records.
But I stuck with it for quite some time as it was my only option.
For some time I played with Webmin as well. Didn't knew about it, looked very cool: a control panel specifically designed for controlling Linux services - such as BIND! I set up a small server but couldn't make it work or sync the domains correctly, so I gave up on that idea.
Recently I got wind of the Route 53 extension. Looked promising but it is quite expensive: 50c per domain up to 25 domains, then 10c per domain. For a few domains that is rather cheap but when you have hundreds things start to accumulate really fast. But I decided to go with it. Set everything up, white-labeled the thing, created a delegation set and...
Couldn't sync because Amazon limits you to 100 domains. Had to ask for a raise, which they promptly complied. Then I got to sync all my domains.
All is fine and dandy, until it weren't. For some reason new domains werent' syncing to the Route 53 service. After fiddling for a while without a solution I decided to manually add the domain to the Route 53 service. Then I found out that now Plesk cannot sync records, as it was not created in the same delegation set as the previous domains.
More research went underway and I found out that I cannot manipulate delegation sets with the GUI, so I had to install Amazon's CLI tool. Fine... added the domain to the correct delegation set and... still won't sync.
So I decided to brute-force things and asked the extension to delete all my domains and sync them again. Now it worked. But later I would find out about a nasty surprise: Amazon charges you when a domain is *created*, so I was slammed with another bill for my domains.
Anyways, things worked for a while, until they didn't anymore. Argh! Domains stopped syncing again, new entries wouldn't get pushed even though the Route 53 extensions says that all domains were updated when I hit the Mass Update button. Not sure what to do at this point, I don't want to have to create entries manually.
So I decided to give it another go to my own DNS server. Got a tutorial on how to install BIND, did it, installed the Plesk Slave DNS Manager extension, set up keys and RNDC and... it synced the first time, but new domains weren't getting synced. Again. Ugh! I deleted that test server really fast.
Then I decided to give the Webmin idea one more try. Installed it, set up the keys and RNDC and... voilà! Looks like I FINALLY made my idea work as intended. Weird thing is, I did the same steps as before when I tried Webmin for the first time, but this time it worked correctly. Not sure why, but anyway... The Slave DNS extension is syncing records in real time - I still have Route 53 installed on the servers and it is still not syncing new domains.
So that's my journey on setting up some DNS servers, all because I wanted to have a 'white label experience' with NS. And quite much cheaper than Route 53.
Let's just hope that this keeps on working as intended...
I would like to just write down my experiences on using external DNS services. It's been quite an adventure and I would like to share it with the community in the hopes this will help someone with the same problems. Some of you may have seen my previous posts while working on these issues. So here is the situation:
I run multiple Plesk servers. I undestand Plesk comes with its own DNS server and I could just point all my domains to each server according to where it's hosted, but that would make maintenance problematic in the long run IMO. So I decided early on that I would try to use an external DNS server, so I could have a single set of NS servers hosting all domains without regards to where it's hosted.
So I found the Digital Ocean DNS extension. Looks promising, but there were some shortcomings:
- Digital Ocean limits the number of domains in your account. Sure, it's free so I can't expect much from them. But I had to repeatedly ask them for a domain raise, which they complied happily. I even asked them about paying for the service, which is only fair, but they refused.
- Sometimes things would get out of sync. I would add some record or update something, and it would not get reflected into Digital Ocean. This would also cause problems with Let's Encrypt since it relies on DNS records. Sometimes I would have to "delete" the domain from DO and then add it again. It worked most of the time but sometimes things would get stuck for no apparent reason.
- The extension is way slow if there are lots of domains (over 100 I guess). It would also make it very slow to update DNS records.
But I stuck with it for quite some time as it was my only option.
For some time I played with Webmin as well. Didn't knew about it, looked very cool: a control panel specifically designed for controlling Linux services - such as BIND! I set up a small server but couldn't make it work or sync the domains correctly, so I gave up on that idea.
Recently I got wind of the Route 53 extension. Looked promising but it is quite expensive: 50c per domain up to 25 domains, then 10c per domain. For a few domains that is rather cheap but when you have hundreds things start to accumulate really fast. But I decided to go with it. Set everything up, white-labeled the thing, created a delegation set and...
Couldn't sync because Amazon limits you to 100 domains. Had to ask for a raise, which they promptly complied. Then I got to sync all my domains.
All is fine and dandy, until it weren't. For some reason new domains werent' syncing to the Route 53 service. After fiddling for a while without a solution I decided to manually add the domain to the Route 53 service. Then I found out that now Plesk cannot sync records, as it was not created in the same delegation set as the previous domains.
More research went underway and I found out that I cannot manipulate delegation sets with the GUI, so I had to install Amazon's CLI tool. Fine... added the domain to the correct delegation set and... still won't sync.
So I decided to brute-force things and asked the extension to delete all my domains and sync them again. Now it worked. But later I would find out about a nasty surprise: Amazon charges you when a domain is *created*, so I was slammed with another bill for my domains.
Anyways, things worked for a while, until they didn't anymore. Argh! Domains stopped syncing again, new entries wouldn't get pushed even though the Route 53 extensions says that all domains were updated when I hit the Mass Update button. Not sure what to do at this point, I don't want to have to create entries manually.
So I decided to give it another go to my own DNS server. Got a tutorial on how to install BIND, did it, installed the Plesk Slave DNS Manager extension, set up keys and RNDC and... it synced the first time, but new domains weren't getting synced. Again. Ugh! I deleted that test server really fast.
Then I decided to give the Webmin idea one more try. Installed it, set up the keys and RNDC and... voilà! Looks like I FINALLY made my idea work as intended. Weird thing is, I did the same steps as before when I tried Webmin for the first time, but this time it worked correctly. Not sure why, but anyway... The Slave DNS extension is syncing records in real time - I still have Route 53 installed on the servers and it is still not syncing new domains.
So that's my journey on setting up some DNS servers, all because I wanted to have a 'white label experience' with NS. And quite much cheaper than Route 53.
Let's just hope that this keeps on working as intended...
