2 Plesk Servers - Redundant DNS?

catch22media · Unread post by **catch22media** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:48 pm

Hey everyone,

I have purchased a second Plesk server in another location and would like to configure my DNS across the two machines. IE:

ns1.mydomain.com --> server1
ns2.mydomain.com --> server2

But I don't quite understand how to set this up - can anyone offer my some advice?

Do I add my primary domain to both machines and setup ns1 and ns2 accordingly in the DNS?

How does it know which server is hosting the files and mail?

Any help would be great!

Thanks,

Luke

Unread post by **scott** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 7:50 am

you want this:

http://www.atomicrocketturtle.com/Jooml ... iew/50/29/

catch22media · Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:05 am

Thanks Scott - After posting I did discover that. However I am still unclear on one thing.

Server 1 currently hosts catch22media.com (with ns1. and ns2.catch22media.com in the DNS config)

So when I setup server 2, do I add ns2.catch22media.com on that server and if so, where? Do I add catch22media.com as a domain on both servers? (My guess here is no). Or is simply having ns2.catch22media.com pointing to the proper IP at the registrar enough?

Hopefully you get my confusion.

Thanks,

Luke

Unread post by **scott** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 11:40 am

server 1 is ns1.catchmedia...
server 2 is ns2.catchmedia...

server 1 is a secondary for domains on server 2
server 2 is a secondary for domains on server 1

catch22media · Thu Sep 13, 2007 12:38 pm

Yep - I got that as well, thanks Scott.

Do I add catch22media.com as a domain on the second server as well (in order for it to know that it is ns2.catch22media.com)? Or simply leave it on server 1 and rely on the IP address at registrar level to do the work?

Unread post by **scott** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:39 pm

nope, the way that works is it generates the named include files for each side... hence the "auto-secondary". It wouldnt be very automatic if you had to manually create everything for it to work.

catch22media · Unread post by **catch22media** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 3:33 am

alright, well, i guess i'm probably about to down half my sites, lol, but here we go ... thanks for the help.

catch22media · Unread post by **catch22media** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:26 pm

Just one more question here before I go making changes to my setup.

Lets say:

ns1.catch22media.com - server 1
ns2.catch22media.com - server 2

domain catch22media.com is located on server 1.

My question is this:

If server 1 goes offline - are the domains on server 2 unreachable because server 1 is offline and thus ns2.catch22media doesn't resolve? Or do they still resolve because the system uses the IPs and not the names?

Please excuse my ignorance here - I've been doing a lot of reading on this and can't seem to put my head around it.

Thanks!

Highland · Unread post by **Highland** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:58 am

DNS just points you to the server. So if server 1 goes down, server 2 will still respond to DNS requests and point people to server 1. The good news on this is it will help in email situations because your domain will still resolve which will cause most mail servers to retry. If you couldn't resolve DNS some servers will bounce email back as undeliverable.