Creating custom nameservers when registering a VPS?

Question

I have been trying to setup custom nameservers. We have a domain, lets call it “example.com” and I would like “ns1.example.com” and “ns2.example.com” to act as nameservers.

Here are the steps I have completed so far:

1. Registered a VPS with a local VPS provider.
2. Pointed example.com at our VPS providers nameservers.
3. Attempted to configure WHM to use n1.example.com and ns2.example.com as nameservers.
4. Created “Registry hosts” with our domain registrar that point to “n1.example.com” and “ns2.example.com” using the IP addresses of our VPS.

Neither of the above options work. I am a bit lost on how to proceed. I’m not sure what to query for on each domain to test for success.

Is this setup correct?

Answer 1

You will need an additional IP to configure the second nameserver in WHM. You can point example.com and ns1.example.com to your main IP, but you need a second IP that you can point ns2.example.com to. Add this IP to your WHM and then assign it to the second nameserver.

Answer 2

1. You need two name servers, meaning two VPS
2. The test to see if they are properly configured is dig @ip-address SOA example.com, you must get an authoritative response (flag aa in dig's output).
3. Then (and only then), you can move to the next step, tell your registrar to use these servers for example.com

Answer 3

You have a few options.

You can set both ns1 & ns2 to the same IP. This WILL work (as you are required to have 2 name servers for the domain to be "Active") but not recommended. This would work the same as getting a second IP for your existing server.

You can get a public secondary name server. Most companies ISP's or hosting companies do this for a small charge (or free).

Or get another VPS and host yourself another NS

edit: chuck your domain name in here: http://www.intodns.com/ Very handy to see what it says.