Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Reseller NS servers setup
Reseller NS servers setup
| Posted by PTWS, 03-20-2007, 08:35 AM |
| Having learned from a previous post how wonderfull this comunity can be in terms of helping each other, i couldn't resist asking for help on another topic that has been making me wonder for some time.
We have several reseller accounts spread over 3 providers. We follow the old saying of not putting all your eggs on the same basket!
For DNS we use different domains at each reseller account we create/buy.
What we wanted to do is to have NS1 and NS2.maindomain.com on reseller account #1, NS3 and NS4.maindomain.com on reseller account #2 and so on.
How can we accomplish this?
I know that if dns (ns1 and ns2) at maindomain is down i will lose all the other, but that brings me to my second question:
How can we setup a backup NS records on another place so that if NS1 and NS2 fail we can use the other for domain resolution?
Also, do all the domains hosted need to have this backup ns entry also or only the main one?
I know that this is alot of questions, but on the other end i think alot of people will find this thread usefull.
Kind regards and thank you for any help!
Santo
|
| Posted by MrRadic, 03-20-2007, 09:19 AM |
| Santo,
If NS1 and NS2 are down, it should automatically fail-over to NS3 and NS4. Note, this is if the actual nameserver box is down, not the shared box. If you want fail-over, you'll need to buy fail-over hosting with true load balancing.
|
| Posted by PTWS, 03-20-2007, 09:59 AM |
| Hello MrRadic,
Our intention is to:
1 - Supply to all our clients a nsX.maindomain.com as the DNS servers. nsX could be ns1 or ns10 depending on where the server is, instead of a different domain DNS server for each account we have.
2 - Be able to route our main site to another box if the main one goes down so we wont loose our support and main site system. This would allow our clients to interact with us even if our main site is down. The idea is to mirror our main domain on another box we have at another provider or datacenter and switch to it in case of an emergency.
Any help setting up this system is higly appriciated. We think that with a system like this, plus our new backup system we contracted recently, we should be able to switch providers or servers within a couple of hours with all our clients sites in case something happens with our mainsite or any other site we have at the several providers.
Thank you for your help,
Santo
|
| Posted by (Stephen), 03-20-2007, 10:11 AM |
| Santo,
Based on what you said I'd actually recommend a paid service like DNSMadeEasy that has a DNs interface with a nice GUI, set the records to have low TTLs then if you ever have server outages your cleints can be on same nameservers for everything, but you can do a quick record swap and get them up ASAP.
|
| Posted by Montypaks, 03-29-2007, 04:56 AM |
| Actaully, I'm also very interested in setting this up. therefore if mainsite on ns1 and ns2 goes down, it switches to ns3 and ns4 and loads the mirror site on server number 2.
To do this tho, would you need to park the domain of your main site unto your second server so if the switch happens, then your domain still remains the same?
Another thing in setting up ns3 and ns4 namesevers, would you need to configure anything on the box itself or you just need to register those name servers with the domain registrar?
|
| Posted by tiggee, 03-29-2007, 05:42 AM |
| This is not how DNS works though.
When you give your registrar 4 name servers ALL name servers are used. There is a round robin being done. So each name server will be hit 25% the first time. If that name server is down then there is a 33% chance for the remaining three, etc.. (until it runs out of name servers or times out).
|
| Posted by Montypaks, 03-29-2007, 05:54 AM |
| Thanks for the reply tigee. Don't want to hijack this thread so is it cool to have a chat with you?
I just got more confused
|
| Posted by PTWS, 03-29-2007, 09:42 AM |
| No problem Monty... I am also learning and your question is very interesting.
Kind regards,
|
| Posted by tiggee, 03-29-2007, 06:06 PM |
| Sure, send me an IM if you have any questions.
Bascially many people think that if you give your regsitrar a list of 3, 4, 5 or more name servers then that is the order that they are looked up.
For example:
If you tell your registrar to use:
ns1.example.com
ns2.example.com
ns3.example.com
Then most people think it will "always" try ns1 first and then if that is down it will try ns2, then ns3, etc...
But that is not the case at all.
It is totally random (round robin).
It will try ns1 first 33% of the time. It will try ns2 first 33% of the time and ns3 first 33% of the time.
If it did try ns2 first AND if it was down it would then choose from ns1 and ns3 (50% chance of each).
Then if the second was down also then it would try the third name server.
But there is no set order that they are tried. It is completely random. This is why it does not matter the order you tell your registrar the name servers.
So in your case traffic would not always be going to ns1 and ns2. It would be going to ns1, ns2, n3 and ns4.
|
| Posted by Montypaks, 03-30-2007, 02:19 AM |
| Since the OP doesn't mind then I'll just post here.
Ok say my original site is site1.com and then i registered ns1 to ns4.site1.com. However, the domain site1.com only points to only ns1 and ns2.
Therefore from your prev posts, adding ns3 (or ns4) to the list of name server the domain points to would actually help stabilize the site.
And of course that'll mean mirroring the site unto the second server (ns3and ns4) and adding it as an add on domain right?
|
| Posted by tiggee, 03-30-2007, 09:38 AM |
| If you had your site hosted on two IPs, let's say 1.2.3.4, and 6.7.8.9.
If ns1 and ns2 were on the same network as 1.2.3.4 and had it pointed to 1.2.3.4
And if ns3 and ns4 were on the same network as 6.7.8.9 and had it pointed to 6.7.8.9.
Then yes, as long as you had both sites mirrored all of the time you would get a self made failover service. So if the network of 1.2.3.4 was down all of the traffic would end up going to 6.7.8.9.
Now this would break a few RFCs and you would get a long list of errors with DNS checks (like wwww.dnsstuff.com). But it would work.
It would NOT send your traffic to 1.2.3.4 and only send your traffic to 6.7.8.9 if 1.2.3.4 was down. Your traffic would be split if both were running.
My suggestion would be to test this with a junk domain if you really want to do this. Then once you are confident it is working you could put it on your main domain.
|
| Posted by foobic, 03-30-2007, 10:28 AM |
| If you have a system like that though, it's just a small step to make it work properly (ie. geographically-separate nameservers, no errors on dnsstuff and all traffic goes to 1.2.3.4 until you want it going to 6.7.8.9).
What you need to do is edit the zone files on both servers so the A records point to 1.2.3.4 (normally) or 6.7.8.9 (when 1.2.3.4 is down).
|
| Posted by tiggee, 03-30-2007, 10:07 PM |
| Yes, setting up a monitoring service to change your DNS automatically is what you really should do. This is what is normally referred to as DNS Failover. But I do not think the original poster wanted to setup a monitoring services, etc.....
|
Add to Favourites 
Print this Article
Also Read
Levi 1 (Views: 797)