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Adding DNS Records (A, CNAME, MX, NS, SRV, TXT)

The most common types of DNS records are:

The form for resource records input is organized as follows:

To add a DNS record to a zone file:

  1. Select Service Director - Domain Manager - Domains.
  2. Select the domain by clicking on its name. As a domain details will be displayed, click the DNS Zone tab. The list of DNS records appears.
  3. Click the New Record button.
  4. Fill the form that appears:
    1. You can type the sub-domain name into the Name field. Since the form we are talking about is designed for adding different types of records, we can say that the Name field should contain the subject of the query, e.g., the address you want to use as your Internet e-mail address (for MX record), or the alias name (for CNAME record), etc. However, to avoid any mistakes, please remember that:

      - If you leave the Name field empty, the record will affect just the original domain name, not a sub-domain. In this case, after you save the record you will see the @ symbol in the record name column.

      - If you type the @ symbol into the Name field, this will mean the same as described above.

      - If you type the sub-domain with the trailing dot into the Name field (e.g., subdomain.domain.com.) the record will affect the sub-domain named subdomain.domain.com.

      - If you type the sub-domain without the trailing dot into the Name field, (e.g., subdomain.my), the domain name indicated in this record (i.e., the contents of the Host field for example, domain.com) will be automatically appended to the record name and, as a result the record will affect the sub-domain named subdomain.my.domain.com.

    2. Into the TTL field you can type in seconds how long other name servers should cache, or save, this record (TTL is short for time-to-live). For example, the 86400 value corresponds to one day.

      Note: The minimal default TTL for all the resource records containing in the zone file is indicated in the SOA record. And this default TTL can be re-defined for every record containing in the zone file. Thus, if you leave the TTL field empty, then the default minimal TTL will be applied to this record.

    3. Select the type of the resource record (A, CNAME, MX, or NS) from the Type drop-down menu. Please see the short description of the record types in the beginning of this section. For more information, please refer to the DNS documentation, for example, you can look at the Web.
    4. The Priority field is needed to add MX and SRV records, namely, to specify a mail server priority. Thus, this field becomes active only in case you have selected the MX record type from the Type drop-down menu. Mailers attempt to deliver to the mail exchanger with the lowest preference value (highest priority). This seems a little counterintuitive at first - the most preferred mail exchanger has the lowest preference value. But since the preference value is an unsigned quantity, this lets you specify a "best" mail exchanger at preference value 0. Generally, the mailer priority is the digit within the range from 0 to 65535. If delivery to the most preferred mail exchanger(s) fails, mailers should attempt delivery to less preferred mail exchangers (those with higher preference values), in order of increasing preference value. That is, mailers should try more preferred mail exchangers before they try less preferred mail exchangers. More than one mail exchanger may share the same preference value, too. This gives the mailer its choice of which to send to first. The mailer should try all the mail exchangers at a given preference value before proceeding to the next higher value, though.
    5. In the Value field you should indicate the answer to the query. Records are always read from left to right, with the subject to be queried about on the left and the answer to the query on the right. For example, for MX record you should indicate the mail server name, for CNAME record - the canonical name of the machine indicated before in the relevant A record, etc.
    6. You can add a free-form comment into the Comment field.
  5. Click the Save button.

Examples:

Note: There also must be an A record in your DNS for each machine you enter as a name server in your domain. There must be at least two NS records in every DNS entry.

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