DNS and Hosting

DNS Manager

DNS Manager in the Admin panel is used to create and manage:

• service DNS zones - to host your corporate site and provide third level domain hosting.
• instant alias templates - to provide immediate access to users' newly registered domains until their domain's DNS hasn't been propagated.
• DNS records - to manage servers external to H-Sphere with H-Sphere DNS.

It's not intended to work with your user domains' dns.

Adding DNS Zones

You must have at least one DNS zone in your system. Before you start adding a DNS zone, make sure to have added the DNS servers with Service IPs.

To add a DNS zone:

1. Select DNS Manager in the E.Manager menu:
2. Click the Add DNS Zone link:

   

3. Enter zone name and zone administrator e-mail and choose whether to allow third level domain hosting in this zone:

   

   • Name: the name of the DNS zone you are going to create. If this domain name is not yet registered, don't forget to register it with a domain registration company.
   • Admin e-mail: the e-mail address of this DNS zone administrator.
   • Allow third level domain hosting: allow the creation of lower level domains in this DNS zone.
   • Master/slave server: available only for service DNS zones - allows you to choose and appoint a master and a slave server. The information is backed up every hour.
4. After you submit the form, the new zone appears in the DNS Manager table:

   

5. Click the EDIT icon to go to the DNS zone management page. Here you can add instant alias templates, custom DNS records to your DNS zone:

   

Instant Alias Templates

Instant Alias Templates are used to generate Instant Aliases, temporary addresses providing immediate access to users' domains from the Internet. They are usually helpful when the DNS servers worldwide are being refreshed and the site is temporarily unavailable at the regular domain name.

Adding Instant Alias Templates

To add instant alias, do the following:

1. Select DNS Manager in the E.Manager menu.
2. Click the EDIT icon to go to the DNS zone management page. The following page appears:

   

3. To add an instant alias template, click the Add instant alias link. This will open the following form to fill out:



• Prefix: instant alias prefix that will appear on the left to the domain part in user's instant domain alias. Different prefixes should be set if you use different shared IP tags. Other than that, it is recommended to use one and the same prefix (e.g. u for all instant alias templates).
• Shared IP tag: a digital "mark" that helps separate sites within one plan on one logical server. All sites located on the same logical host under the same plan are usually assigned to the same shared IP. This feature allows to give a different shared IP to a group of sites of, say, explicit nature. This may become necessary as many corporate firewalls filter sites based on their IP, not the domain name.

  Normally, you are expected to have devoted one IP address for each shared IP tag. To use a shared IP tag, you need to have it defined for every logical host.

  Numbers 10 to 99 are acceptable. The default value of 2 is assigned when the field is submitted being empty.

Click Submit. You will be taken back to the list of instant aliases with the new instant alias template added to the list.



Editing Instant Alias Templates

Once an Instant Alias is created, the system adds all necessary A DNS records to this DNS zone.

To view these DNS records, cilck the Edit button near the necessary Instant Aliases:

The upper part of the table lists the existing DNS A records in the selected DNS zone. To delete DNS records, click the Trash icon.

The lower part of the table appears only when the DNS zone does not contain A records for some logical servers. It lists these logical servers with their IP's.

To add a logical server to the DNS zone, click the Add button. You can add all these servers to the DNS zone by clicking the Add records to all listed logical servers link at the bottom of the table.

To delete Instant Alias Template, click the Trash icon next to the corresponding alias.

DNS Records

Custom DNS records are required to manage non-HSphere servers with H-Sphere DNS zone or to configure new logical servers that are added manually. This document tells how to add custom DNS records.

Depending on the server, you can add:

• A records
• MX records
• CNAME records

To add new custom DNS records:

1. In your admin control panel go to the E.Manager menu -> DNS Manager. The following page shows:



2. Click the Edit icon near the chosen DNS zone. A page similar to this will appear:



3. At the bottom of the page that shows, select a DNS record from the drop-down list and click the Go button.
4. On the form that shows enter all necessary data and click Submit to save.

You can add one of the following types of DNS records:

• A records to map domain names and web server IP's.
• MX records to map domain names and their mail server IP's.
• CNAME records to map aliases with domain names.
  
  Adding custom A records

The Address record (A record) gives you the IP address of a domain. That way, users that try to go to www.example.com will get to the right IP address.

To add a new DNS A record, you need to provide a set of parameters:

• Name: the string appended to the domain name to create a FQDN mapped to the IP. For example, if your domain name is besthosting.com, entering cp will make the fully qualified domain name cp.besthosting.com.
• TTL (a Time To Live): seconds to elapse before the record is refreshed in the provider's DNS cache.
• Data: the IP address that fully qualified domain name will be mapped to. You can get this IP address with any ping utility.

Adding custom MX records

A host name can have one or more Mail Exchange (MX) records. These records point to hosts that accept mail messages on behalf of the host. Adding MX records is similar to adding A records:

• Name: your local domain name. If you leave the Name field blank, all mail will be redirected for the base zone.
• Data: the priority of the record and mail domain name (not the IP) mail will be forwarded to.
  Note: The priority of the custom MX record defines whether your external servers will act as secondary or primary. For instance, if you set the priority of the custom MX record higher than 10 (e.g. 11), your external mail server will be used as secondary. If you set the priority of the custom MX record lower than 10 (e.g. 9), your external mail server will be used as primary. In the latter case, your mail will be sent to your external mail server until it goes down or becomes otherwise inaccessible. Then the default mail server will take over.

WARNING: Please pay attention to $ORIGIN when you add an MX record.

Adding custom CNAME records

A CNAME record or Canonical Name record is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS) that specifies that the domain name is an alias of another, canonical domain name.
If you have selected CNAME record, the following page appears:

In the case of CNAME records, the values have the same format as in the A record with the exception of the Data field. In the Data field you have to enter the name of the server to which you are creating the alias record.

WARNING: Please pay attention to $ORIGIN when you add a CNAME record.

The DNS records you create appear on the zone management page:

You can't edit DNS records. To remove unnecessary records, click the Trash icon

Hosting Your Corporate Site

To set up your corporate site:

Step 1. Make sure you have a service DNS zone

1. Select DNS Manager in the E.Manager menu.
2. If the DNS zone is not in the list, click Add DNS Zone.
3. On the page that appears, enter the service domain name and other values and click Submit.

Step 2. Create a service plan

You may already have a service plan in your system. It can also be called 'System plan'. If you don't, do the following:

1. Select Create in the Plans menu:

   

2. Click the Select icon for Unix plan wizard:

   

3. On the first step of the Unix Plan Creation Wizard, set the plan name to System or Service.
4. Check the Include boxes next to the resources you would like to use with your site.
   Read more about plan resources in Creating And Editing Plans (Plan Wizards).
5. Make sure to check Service domain.
6. Scroll down to the the Settings section and set Billing Type to Without billing.
7. Click the Next button to go to Step 2.
8. Complete the wizard.

Step 3. Disallow signups from outside your admin account

After you have created the system plan, you need to make sure that it is not used by your customers:

1. Select Manage in the Plans menu.
2. Click Access for the system plan.
3. Make sure only Admin is checked.
4. Select Manage in the Plans menu.
5. Enable the System plan by clicking the ON/OFF button.

Step 4. Create a service account

Now you can create an account for your service domain:

1. Select the Signup menu.
2. Click Select next to the recently created System plan.
3. Select service plan signup wizard.
4. Create service account using the wizard. When prompted the type of the domain, select Service domain.

NOTE: Your service account is treated as an ordinary end customer account. You'll be charged for all resources used in this account.

Third-Level Domains

 Adding Domains for Third Level Hosting

Third level domains are created based on second level domains and have same features as second level domains. Customers can use your service domain to create third level domains of their own. For instance, if your second level domain is example.com, your customers can create domains like illustrative.example.com.

Third level domains are registered on your DNS server and need no domain registration company to be registered.

To add a domain for third level hosting, you need to create a DNS zone and allow third level hosting in the zone settings.

Third level domain registration will be available for your users only if you allow it in the plans. See Plan Creation Wizard for details.

Mail Under Service Domain for 3rd Level Hosting

To allow third-level hosters to create mailboxes under a service domain:

1. Choose Manage in the Plans menu and check the Third level domain (Mail Under Host Domain) option for a plan:

   

2. Choose DNS Manager in the Settings menu and click the Off icon to enable the Allow creating emails under Service Zone option for a particular service domain: