For our customers of our Unamanged Dedicated Server services, you will have some options in choosing how to implement your DNS solution for your domain (unmanaged dedicated hereafter referred to as DU).   You may intend to manage DNS from a different service or infrastructure other than your DU server, which is fine... but if you intend to provide DNS services via your DU server, you will need to install and configure your own DNS server software.

Most customers choose to host DNS through their DU server with us, and to utilize our redundant Internet facing DNS servers to provide DNS resolution for their domain.  There is no additional charge for this, you simply need to configure DNS for your domain in a certain fashion.  For those customers choosing to utilize this feature, the following points will help guide you through the process and reflect the most common DNS solution our customers use:

• Set your NAMESERVER values for your domain registration to our nameservers (if you currently have your domain up/active elsewhere, you may wish to do this as the LAST step after all the following have been completed and confirmed). 
• Configure the firewall on your DU server is configured to allow TCP and UDP port 53 traffic from our DNS servers (listed below) .
• Install/configure a DNS server solution on your server.
  • Remember that the only software which we pre-install on your Dedicated Server (unmanaged) is the Operating System itself (unless a custom solution was prepared).  This means by default, a DNS server software solution is not installed on the server. For either Windows or Linux DU servers, this isn't necessarily a big or expensive task.  For linux, BIND is available as an open source solution and for Windows, Windows Server Operating System includes Microsoft DNS (and BIND for Win is also available).  Any of these will work fine whether you run your server as the only DNS server, or if you chose to utilize 3Essentials redundant Internet facing DNS servers. 
  • Install and configure your DNS server software, and set it to allow DNS zone transfers to our DNS servers (listed below).
  • Set up the domain as a PRIMARY/MASTER ZONE on your DNS server, and create any DNS records you need (various A, CNAME, MX records to meet your needs).
  • Configure it to send NOTIFIES to our DNS servers (listed below), if supported by your DNS server software.
  • If you're moving from one of our SHARED HOSTING plans to a DU plan:
    • you'll need to increment the SERIAL for the zone file to a number greater than currently in use on our SHARED HOSTING for that domain.  Submit a support request asking for the SERIAL of your current zone file for your domain on our SHARED HOSTING... when we provide you that SERIAL, configure the zone on your DU server with a SERIAL greater than that number.
    • when you're ready to cut over from the DNS on the SHARED HOSTING to the DNS on your DU server, submit a support request notifying us to cut over DNS from your shared hosting server to your DU server (we need to update our systems to reflect that your server is the DNS MASTER).
• That should be all you need... you can test if the DNS zone/records from DNS on your DU server have transferred to our DNS servers by running nslookup commands directly against our DNS servers.  For example:
  • nslookup www.mydomain.com ns1.3essentials.com (to test our nameservers)
  • nslookup www.mydomain.com Dxx.3essentials.com (to test your server as master DNS, where xx = your server's hostname)
• Please submit a support request if you need further assistance.

Our DNS servers are:

• ns1.3essentials.com (66.179.167.245)
• ns2.3essentials.com (66.179.167.246)