Domain Configuration

Ziycon

Not sure if this is the right board, feel free to move if a better fit is found.

I have a domain registered with host A which also hosts my mail for the domain and I have two servers with Host B.

Is it possible to get Host A where the domain is to point WWW to one Host B server and a sub-domain to the second Host B server while keeping mail working on Host A by just modifying the CNAME entries for the domain?

seamus

Yeah, no reason why you can't do that.

So, you can do the www bit using either an A or CNAME record.

The record will be either

www     A     1.2.3.4

or

www     CNAME     clientABC.somehost.net

The subdomain bit depends on whether you actually want a subdomain, or just a host that looks like a subdomain. In the former case you need to create a new NS record for the subdomain and designate a nameserver. In the latter case, it's just another A or CNAME record.

Graham

seamus wrote: »

The subdomain bit depends on whether you actually want a subdomain, or just a host that looks like a subdomain. In the former case you need to create a new NS record for the subdomain and designate a nameserver.

Huh

Why would a subdomain require new NS records?

seamus

Graham wrote: »

Huh

Why would a subdomain require new NS records?

If someone actually wanted to run a delegated subdomain, is what I meant.

Ziycon

The sub domain would be a separate server (otherserver.domain.com), under the same domain as the WWW section of the site which is hosted on a second server.

The goal here is to separate out the load as the subdomain will get a lot of traffic compared to the WWW site.

My other option was to use load balancing and add on new web servers as needed so the LB would serve both the WWW and subdomain.

Are there any pitfalls or pluses to either of these setups?

mneylon

Without having all the details it's hard to provide precise advice ..

Putting mail with X isn't complicated
You essentially create set the MX record to be wherever the mail is meant to be going eg. mail.domain.tld
mail.domain.tld should be an A record

For the web servers ...
I'm not sure what you're doing, but if, for example, you had video files on one server and the rest of the content on another you'd end up with something like:

www.domain.tld -> A record to server1 (you could also CNAME it to domain.tld)
domain.tld -> same as above

video.domain.tld -> A record to server 2

Load balancing is for when you have two or more servers with the same content

So you'd have:

Load balancer:
- server 1
- server 2

(sorry - I obviously can't draw using text!)

Another option is to use "round robin" DNS where you assign multiple records to a single hostname

eg:
www.domain.tld -> A record to IP1
www.domain.tld -> A record to IP2

---

www.domain.tld -> A record to IPx

the problem with "round robin" is that you have no way of controlling how evenly the load gets spread.

In any case your hosting provider should be able to advise on which options could work

HTH

Michele