Help setting up DNS please!

[joemiller]

Hi, I'm struggling to get my head round how to set up my DNS records for my cloud server, and hope someone can guide me.

I have a server hosted on the cloud at Rackspace. I'm wanting to use the server (I only have one) to host a number of small websites, all controlled through the ISPConfig control panel.

The server is running CentOS 6.3 and I've been following the tutorial here. I want my server to act as the DNS server for all the sites I host.

My problem is knowing what I should put as in the nameserver on my domain registrar; should it be the Rackspace nameserver, or my own? If it's my own, then how do I set up a public dns. I believe that I've currently set up a private one, but I'm not sure!

I hope this makes sense, and someone can advise me!

Thanks in advance.

[cfoe]

for most domains you need multiple dns servers. you can run a "normal" dns server on your server parallel to all the other services.
Even if you setup your domains with just your one dns server or trick the registrar by using multiple ips for your server it would be not failsafe. When your dns server crashes all domains will be unavailable.

The rackspace DNS service is free and is redundant on a global scale.
A con is that you are not able to control the Raackspace DNS Service through ISPConfig and its API. Unless you program a module using the APIs of the service.

To answer your question about what nameservers to put in on domain registration:
You must provide the nameservers/IPs handling the entries for the domain. If you use the rackspace service -> hostnames/IPs of their servers. If you use your own DNS server -> hostname/IP of your server on which the dns server is running.

If you use your own server(s) as nameservers I would highly recommend to use the Rackspace DNS service for the domain providing the subdomains for the nameservers. Example: ns1.your-domain.com, ns2.your-domain.com ...
Add these A-Records to the your-domain.com Zone on the Rackspace DNS Service. Otherwise your Nameserver is resolving its own Hostname which is not best practice for good availability.

Although it might be written a little bit complex I hope I could be of some help.

[joemiller]

Thanks for that Christian. What you've said makes sense. I'll have to think about which one I'll use.

If I may just check my understanding, if I want to be able to add subsequent zones through the ISPConfig control panel after I've created my main my main one, then Ishould create the zone mydomain.com on Rackspace, using their nameservers, then create ns records, ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com (ns2 being on a different server). I can then create my new domains myotherdomain.com using ISPConfig and get it to use ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com as it's nameservers?

Thanks again for your reply.

[cfoe]

you need to create A-Records ns1.mydomain.com (IP of your DNS servers) on the Rackspace DNS Service. NS-Records are indicating what nameservers are authoritative for the zone (the domain). Example: myotherdomain.com get the NS-Records ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com