Serving Sites with External Domain Name Servers
If you host Web sites on this server and have a standalone DNS server acting as a primary (master) name server for your sites, you may want to set up your control panel's DNS server to function as a secondary (slave) name server.
To make the control panel's DNS server act as a secondary name server:
- Go to Domains > domain name > Web Site group title menu > DNS Settings.
- Click Switch DNS Service Mode.
- Specify the IP address of the primary (master) DNS server.
- Click Add.
- Repeat steps from 1 to 5 for each Web site that needs to have a secondary name server on this machine.
To make the control panel's DNS server act as a primary for a zone:
- Go to Domains > domain name > Web Site group title menu > DNS Settings.
- Click Switch DNS Service Mode. The original resource records for the zone will be restored.
If you host Web sites on this server and rely entirely on other machines to perform the Domain Name Service for your sites (there are two external name servers - a primary and a secondary), switch off the control panel's DNS service for each site served by external name servers.
To switch off the control panel's DNS service for a site served by an external name server:
- Go to Domains > domain name > Web Site group title menu > DNS Settings.
- Click Switch Off the DNS Service in the Tools group. Turning the DNS service off for the zone will refresh the screen, so that only a list of name servers remains.
Note: The listed name server records have no effect on the system. They are only presented on the screen as clickable links to give you a chance to validate the configuration of the zone maintained on the external authoritative name servers.
- Repeat the steps from 1 to 3 to switch off the local domain name service for each site served by external name servers.
If you wish to validate the configuration of a zone maintained on authoritative name servers:
- Go to Domains > domain name > Web Site group title menu > DNS Settings.
- Add to the list the entries pointing to the appropriate name servers that are authoritative for the zone: click Add, specify a name server, and click OK. Repeat this for each name server you would like to test.
The records will appear in the list.
- Click the records that you have just created. Parallels Plesk Panel will retrieve the zone file from a remote name server and check the resource records to make sure that domain's resources are properly resolved.
The results will be interpreted and displayed on the screen.