ispconfig and external primary DNS

[FredZ]

I have just installed ispconfig onto a dedicated machine only to discover that the DNS side of it operates outside our current DNS systems.

Senario:
Enterprise appliance style network. This is where there is a dedicated (replicated) machine for every function. This means that we currently have our DNS structure in place on numerous dedicated servers. Our current policy states that no server will host more than a single function, and will be replicated as per policy. What I want to know is, “can ispconfig be configured to use these external DNS or do I have to setup the DNS on the ispconfig machine to replicate out to the primary (master) DNS server for further replication?” All of the DNS servers on the network are bind and do not use a database (conventional setup). I may need to look at using a database for our DNS, but this will mean yet another 2 (at a minimum) servers for the database/s.

I am trying to make life simple for myself given that we currently have a single point of entry (modification) into our DNS.

The ispconfig machines are currently sitting within a test environment separate from the production environment. So currently it doesn’t pose a problem.

Any comments would be most helpful at this point.

Regards


Fred

[till]

ISPConfig works fine with external DNS. You dont have to use the builtin DNS functions from ISPConfig, just create websites in ISPConfig and leave the DNS-Manager untouched.

[FredZ]

Hi till, thanks for that

The object of this excercise was to be able to utilise the dns side of ispconfig to automaticaly generate the required entries when the "Create DNS:" was checked; and to also have the ability for our clients to be able to modify their site/s and respective DNS entries on the fly.

Can ispconfig interact directly with an external DNS server. i.e. write zone information directly to the external DNS. Or must I replicate out all the zone entries as they are written by ispconfig.

Also, is there a way of preventing ispconfig from rewriting the "options" sectiion in the named.conf file every time it performs an entry modification? We have a separate file that contains our options so that they don't get over written.

Regards


Fred

[awd.pt]

Hi Fred,

you can configure your dns server as a secundary of the one used on ispconfig, this way the dns changes would be propagated to the slaves by the master (ispconfig), at the same time on the slaves you can maintain your configuration options.
Other way, not so elegant, is for you to hack the dns ispconfig configuration files and place there your configuraion options and create, via nfs, an export fs to your dns server.

I'm quite shure that there are other ways of doing this, but these two should do the trick for you.

Regards,
Sergio

[falko]

Originally Posted by FredZ

Can ispconfig interact directly with an external DNS server. i.e. write zone information directly to the external DNS. Or must I replicate out all the zone entries as they are written by ispconfig.

Have a look here: http://www.howtoforge.com/ispconfig_dns_godaddy

Originally Posted by FredZ

Also, is there a way of preventing ispconfig from rewriting the "options" sectiion in the named.conf file every time it performs an entry modification? We have a separate file that contains our options so that they don't get over written.

You can modify the named.conf template in /root/ispconfig/isp/conf.