managing DNS

Greg Rundlett (freephile) greg at freephile.com
Wed Dec 30 12:31:19 EST 2009


On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile)
<greg at freephile.com> wrote:
> At work I have over 700 domains to manage.  We use dnsmadeeasy which I
> don't find particularly easy.  We also use GoDaddy to register domains
> - and GoDaddy includes DNS management tools so I'm inclined to just
> use them for both registration and DNS management.
>

GoDaddy is apparently ill-equipped to handle a large number of zone
transfers - or maybe it's just the sales rep that I spoke to.  I have
nice DNS management tools (called "Total DNS") available in my
personal GoDaddy account that include zone import.  However, my work
account is a sub-account through a reseller account (which I also
control) and the same menu / products do not show up.  So I was hoping
to convert the sub-account to a regular customer account in order for
the "Total DNS" system to show up.  He wanted to sell me a dedicated
server, with it's DNS controls available through cPanel or Plesk in
order for me to move everything over.  This is unfortunate because at
this point all I really want is to manage my DNS regardless of
hosting.  What I also didn't get from the sales rep was any indication
of the process for setting it up and converting with little to zero
downtime for the sites involved.

I'm still looking for pointers on how people manage large sets of DNS
zones: querying, testing, migrating etc.

> Of course, over time, the DNS records have become very convoluted and
> 'dirty' with cnames and mx records that don't exist on target hosts
> etc.  What I'd like to do is clean it all up and also move it to an
> environment where it truly is easy to manage.
>
> Not being a DNS expert, I am supposing that I should be able to export
> a zone file for every one of the domains, and then clean them up
> manually before importing them into a new (GoDaddy) DNS management
> system.  Or maybe it's easier to just transfer and clean up using
> (GoDaddy's) DNS management application.
>
> How do I go about transferring and cleaning up my records?  It seems
> that I can use a Zone Transfer (AXFR ACL) to copy configuration to
> another name server.
>
> Anyone have recommendations on DNS management tools and service
> providers?   Why are they good?  One small nicety with DNS Made Easy
> is that you can configure internal addresses, so for example
> 'xerox1.example.com' can point to an internal address like
> 192.168.1.10 if that is the IP of your Xerox printer.
>
> Experience managing large sets of domains with GoDaddy - and know the
> limitations or problems associated with their tools?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Greg Rundlett
>



More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list