Customers that have purchased our Customer/Self Managed servers or Unamanged servers, you will have some options in choosing how to implement your DNS solution for your domain.   You may intend to manage DNS from a different service or infrastructure other than your server, which is fine. But if you intend to provide DNS services via your unmanaged server, you will potentially have two options:

VPANEL Customers: 

• If your unmanaged virtual server is on our vpanel/Virtualizor infrastructure, we've built a DNS hosting solution into the vpanel interface.  To utilize it, simply:
  • log into your vpanel account
  • click on DNS
  • create the zones and DNS records you require, including these NS records:
    • NS pdns1.3essentials.com
    • NS pdns2.3essentials.com
  • test/verify: you can test/query to ensure your records are resolving by running these command at a windows command prompt:
    • nslookup yourdomain.com pdns1.3essentials.com
    • nslookup yourdomain.com pdns2.3essentials.com
  • when you've verified pdns1/pdns2 are resolving your DNS records as you expect, update your domain registration with your domain registrar to delegate your domain to pdns1.3essentials.com and pdns2.3essentials.com. 

Non-VPANEL Customers: 

• You need to install and configure your own DNS server software, tips for doing this are provided below.  

Tips for Installing and Configuring your own DNS server

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:

1. 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):
   • ns1.3essentials.com
   • ns2.3essentials.com
2. Configure the firewall on your DU server is configured to allow TCP and UDP port 53 traffic from our DNS servers (listed below) .
3. 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:
     • ns1.3essentials.com [173.227.253.196]
     • ns2.3essentials.com [72.29.101.108]
   • 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). Including setting up NS records:
     • NS ns1.3essentials.com
     • NS ns2.3essentials.com
   • Configure it to send NOTIFIES to and allow zone transfers to our DNS servers (listed below) as 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).
4. Update our systems to know that they are serving DNS for your domain by submitting a support request asking us to "add newdomainname.com" to our customer management systems under your hosting plan for serverX.3essentials.com.. be sure to replace "newdomainname.com" with your actual new domain name, and serverX with your actual servername.  We are developing a process that will allow you to add domains to our DNS system without having to contact support.  More information will be posted in this article once this feature becomes available.
5. It will take up to 3.5 hours for our nameservers to be updated with the new domain name, and pull a zone transfer from your server.
6. 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 or nslookup www.mydomain.com ns2.3essentials.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
7. Please submit a support request if you need further assistance.