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I'm in need of networking expert help.

I have a server (CentOS) with private nameservers. The nameservers are pointing to my server. I have several domains that I set DNS to point to my private nameservers. I am using webmin for server configs and editing some configs with vim in /etc/.. Using bind8 (with webmin module) for domain names to resolve correctly and sites to be accessible by name and not ip.

This setup is working fine, however I want to get rid of BIND and having all the zones on my server. Instead I would like to manage all the zones by 3rd party management tool (GoDaddy Premium DNS). This way I can have all the zones in one place and have multiple servers in future with 1 central place for zones etc.

What do I need to do this? and how? I have few ideas but do not want to mess with it unless I know for sure... Some domain are live and are getting good traffic. Have to do it as fast as possible.

Here are some of my ideas:

  1. There are A records for private nameservers under my main domain. E.g. ns1.example.com & ns2.example.com. Will changing the IP Address for this A record to 3rd party DNS Server IP work? And then configure zones there... Basically instead of doing directly to my server it will go to 3rd party DNS server and then to my server.
  2. Set up DNS resolver on the server to use 3rd party server... If this is the case, where do I start.
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is there any reason you dont want to put all the zones on one webmin server and have that as the master record and then use other webmin servers as slaves this way you only have to make config changes from the master sercver and it will push to the slaves on its own. and if the master server goes down the slasves will still repond you just wont be able to edit from the slave. – WojonsTech Oct 16 '11 at 6:52
I wanted to reduce # of things that are managed on my servers and worry less about running named... Less severs -> less expenses =), your solution looks good but it does the opposite. I got it figured out, changing ips of my Vanity Nameservers aka "private nameserver" to 3rd party DNS server and uploading my old zones there did the trick. – Alex Nov 6 '11 at 4:03
Good to hear that you got it working I have started my own cluster of virtual servers. – WojonsTech Nov 6 '11 at 9:33
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1 Answer

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  1. There are not such things, as "private nameservers" and I don't want translate it into technical term
  2. On one (ordinary singlehomed) host you can't have nemeserverS, you have running DNS-daemon

You want to change NS-servers for all your existing domains, but save as much old zones content, as possible - this is your bisiness-task.

  • Order service from GoDaddy Premium DNS
  • Create empty zones for all your domains, which NSes you want to transfer
  • Edit original zones on your named and decrease TTL to minimim (1h is OK)
  • While your new data for zones replacing old cached, copy-paste stable part of zones to GoDaddy (most IN A, CNAME, TXT RR): NS and SOA only will be new on new place
  • When you'll see working and propagaded and correct zones on GoDaddy and requests to your zones will return fresh-data (according to p.3) you have to go registrar, which registered domains for you and replace glue-records for domains (data, which tells everybody where authoritative-servers for domain located) with new names (GoDaddy's)
  • Wait for TTL-expiration (ask registar how long) and have fun
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thank for you answer, I was referring to Private Nameserver as to Vanity Nameservers, both terms are alias for A records for nameservers. Actually my business task was to "keep all NS-servers on my existing domains and change DNS hosting (server handling my zone files)". Thanks for the help anyway. – Alex Nov 6 '11 at 4:12
In common case, you can't "keep all NSes AND change DNS-hosting", because changing authoritative NS must change IN NS and SOA records of every moved zone – Lazy Badger Nov 6 '11 at 4:32
your are right, that stuff was updated in zones files when I uploaded them from BIND to Premium DNS. It was not upload and done experience, had to do some customization. It was not that bad because all domain had my Vanity Nameservers, I changed IP there to point to Premium DNS host and had my updated zones there... – Alex Nov 6 '11 at 4:37
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