I'm going to be moving servers (and hosting providers) soon. How to switch from one DNS server to the DNS server of the new hosting company?

Question

I'm going to be moving servers (and hosting providers) soon. Currently all the DNS admin is handled by thePlanet (our current hosting company). The server will be moved to rackspacecloud and I would like to use there DNS admin in order to close my thePlanet account. How can I do that? Can I set the both DNS server with the same data at the same time?

Thanks

Answer 1

Yes you can.

A common transfer-plan would be

• (Optional) Modify the TTL (Time-To-Live) values on the existing records on the old server ...

• Check if your old provider is also hosting other (e.g. email / web / web-forwarding / email-forwarding)

• Copy the existing records to the new provider.

• Test these records by querying the new server directly.

  (Example (alter names accordingly) nslookup myhost.com dns.rackspacecloud.com

• Find out where your domain was registered (not always the same as the DNS host) and modify the nameservers to point to rackspacecloud

• Once everything has been transferred, you can run "nslookup -q=NS myhost.com" (to check the transfer has completed), and then close your old account.

Answer 2

If you have DNS service paid for and can use it seperately from the rest of thePlanet services, you should be able to use thePlanet DNS to point to your new servers.

At any rate, you will need to set up new servers first, get their IP addresses and then either: a) point thePlanet DNS service to new IPs; or b) order new hosting provider to create DNS entries for your new IPs; and ask thePlanet to close their DNS service.

Note that DNS is a bit tricky in that changes tend to take time to propagate (could be a day), and even more time, if you change the actual DNS service provider.

During the transition phase there may be hosts on Internet who will resolve to your old servers and other hosts who will get the new IPs. Therefore you should also set up redirection on your old servers for some time.

Precisely for these reasons, I personally tend to use DNS service completely seperately from the rest of hosting, and change it as rarely as possible.