January 23rd, 2007
About DNS...
We’re hoping to push out some DNS management features soon. One of the things we found ourselves discussing, is how fancy people want/need to get. This will be a service that should cover 80% of most people’s needs. The other 20% we assume are doing complicated stuff and probably run their own servers or outsource. That being said, we pretty much eliminated some of the typical DNS options such as picking A, CNAME, PTR, MX, NS records. Everything is simple (or so we hope), designate a mail server, set up hosts and aliases. So just looking for some feedback – will this outrage savvy users or is it something you would welcome?
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Don
I have a DNS management service that I’m content with, yet the more services I can keep in one place the happier I would be. Depending on how it shakes out, that simpler interface may not work as a replacement for my services on my primary domain, but would be welcome for some of my simpler ones. Anything is better than no service, especially when it’s part of my existing management interface!
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Scott
TXT entries for things like spf records would be rather handy.
Also it’d have to handle multiple domains for a single slice if I was to switch over from my own bind server.
Finally, would it have a backup name server off-site as part of the package?
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM matt
scotty – offsite down the road, not immediately.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Jared Kuolt
I like this idea, but how would you handle abuse? For that matter, what would constitute abuse? Would we be allowed to only use the domains pointing inward to our Slices? What if we just need one or two extra records pointed elsewhere (e.g., mail or S3)? How would you handle grey situations like that?
I use EasyDNS.net now, and they’ve been pretty fantastic. You can’t beat their price…
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Tim Lucas
I use everydns.net for all my needs and that serves me just fine… I’ve no real need for you guys to be providing a DNS service.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM estoner
I just manage it through my registrar (GoDaddy), but it would be nice to be independent of them. If I ever need to switch to a different registrar, it will be a pain to switch DNS as well.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Huib
I’m with Scott. TXT entries would be a requirement together with the ability for hosting multiple domains.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Joe
I would definitely use something like this – something independent from registrars that I still don’t have to administer. :) Especially if it has an interface similar to the management console. (Assuming it will handle multiple domains per slice.)
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Stuart
I use zoneedit right now. The only improvement you could make that would cause me to switch is SRV records. (Specifically for Jabber/XMPP.)
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Tom
I’ve used a few free dns providers and one thing that annoys me is poor web interfaces. If your management interface could accept configuration from a text file that’d be cool, or at least batch changes via a textarea. I’ve thought about running bind on my slice and getting a ‘primary’ dns server to secretly AXFR from my slice but that’s a bit more complex!
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Michele
a slicehost customer who needs DNS management is a power user. So, please, allow full management.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM kyle
I second the SRV thingie :-)
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Tarun
I run my own primary DNS server on my slice. All I would really like from slicehost is a secondary DNS server… hopefully on a different subnet/location. Currently I’m using 1and1.com and twisted4life.com
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Tristan
Agree with Michele, if you’re offering it to advanced users who are running their own VPS’s (all your customers, by definition) then it had better be full featured and fully controllable, and not simplified. Just manage the abuse and let us do the rest, that’s all.
I also second TXT records, and “multiple domains” is an obvious requirement.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM chuck
All I really need is a way to update PTR records in slice manager so I don’t have to bug y’all with a support request. Things like MX and TXT records I can do from my registrar, and I can always use webmin for subdomains.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM matt
Wow lots of feed back here. I’m thinking we do 2 things: have a drop dead simple one that covers standard stuff, then another one with every type of DNS record type under the sun for you uber geeks.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Danae
I’m just learning to manage my own server (was kind of forced into it when I wanted a stable, configurable rails environment) so i’d be one of the users for dead-simple DNS management. Thanks for listening to your feedback!
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Igor Clark
Re TXT/”SPF” records – http://homepages.tesco.net/J.deBoynePollard/FGA/smtp-spf-is-harmful.html …
Re Slice DNS service, I, like Tarun, run DNS on 2 separate slices, which is cool, but I’d like to be able to have secondary (or tertiary in my case) slaves on a different subnet.
Cheers
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Phill Kenoyer
How about just running MyDNS with a custom interface?
March 17th, 2008 at 10:00 PM Ben
I am used to hand editing zone files myself. I get confused too easily when I am using some simple DNS interface. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but it really trips me up.
My favorite services have been those that have their user friendly interface plus an “advaned” option somewhere for those more savvy.