Nameserver configuration for VPS

Jedis

New Member
Hello,

I thought I'd try posting here for suggestions to an issue I experienced at my last provider...

I have my email hosted with Google Apps. With the VPS acting as the nameserver for that domain, when my VPS went offline, I did not get any email. This was a major heartache.

I am wondering how to configure my nameservers, so that when the VPS is offline, I have redundant nameservers elsewhere that will resolve the domains? I asked support and was told that I should look into slave nameservers, but am hoping someone can point me to a provider and configuration directions to get it up and running in WHM.

Thanks so much!
 
Hi Jedis,

I should make another tutorial. I moved away from Zerigo a couple of years back now because they seriously raised their prices. Check out BuddyNS, it works extremely well and is very reasonably priced :)

Hope that helps!
 
Hi Dan,

I'm going down the route of using another, minimal VPS package, and am going to run cPanel DNSONLY on it. I am hoping to be able to use the DNS Clustering option in WHM so that DNS changes replicate automatically to the other VPS.

Do you have any experience or knowledge about doing so?
 
Hi Dan,

I'm going down the route of using another, minimal VPS package, and am going to run cPanel DNSONLY on it. I am hoping to be able to use the DNS Clustering option in WHM so that DNS changes replicate automatically to the other VPS.

Do you have any experience or knowledge about doing so?
I used to do this. I had three DigitalOcean VPS around the world as my 2nd-4th NS. I turned all of these off and switched to BuddyNS because it integrated with cPanel using their plugin and was ultimately significantly cheaper than having multiple small VPS.
 
Hi Jedis,

I don't have any experience but it shouldn't be too hard to set up. Let us know how it goes!
 
Thanks everyone. I got BuddyNS configured and set up. Seems to be working great.

It appears you can pay for an "Advanced" account, where you can have "vanity" nameservers that point to something like ns3.yourdomain.com. Could I just get the IP for one of their name servers and add an A record for that IP that points to ns3.mydomain.com? Or is that not a good idea? Not looking to circumvent paying for an advanced account, but I guess I don't understand why I would need to pay for that when I could set it up on my own?
 
Hey @Jedis,

In theory, that would work. Only if they use a static IP for their vanity nameservers. From experience, paid/pro services like that often have numerous IP's used for nameservers. If that's the case, it most likely will not work. However, it may be possible to setup CNAME records to the nameservers they've assigned for your domains. Does that make sense?
 
Hi @KH-DavidL

I setup the CNAME records. Would those resolve if the VPS is down? It should still be replicated to BuddyNS, I think? So I could change the name servers from the BuddyNS to the ns3 and ns4 CNAMEs that I created?
 
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