I was very disappointed to discover that one of the most useful websites for diagnosing DNS issues, DNSstuff.com, has decided to force people to pay for its lookup services. That really sucks, because it was always so good that no-one bothered making a competitor, and now it’s no longer free, I don’t know any other good options.
And they don’t allow you to sign up for less than a year either! Sigh. USD$36 .. I’ll have to think about that. Seems awfully expensive for a totally automated website I’m only likely to use the once or twice a year I make DNS changes. Then again, it’s fucking useful when making those changes. But I don’t like encouraging these “monetising what used to be free” trends. Sigh!
October 7th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Do you run your own DNS servers?
I used to do that, but when I moved to Rackspace I let them take over. Basically, I never really trusted my other hosting providers enough to do it properly (and with reason, I had already suffered the consequences of others’ incompetence in the past).
So when I got my first dedicated server (2002) I started running my own DNS. But in 2005 with the switch to Rackspace I figured that if I couldn’t trust them to do DNS right then who could I?
October 7th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
I run my own DNS servers, since I make changes quite frequently and don’t like waiting for someone else to do it, or using some shoddy interface. I was thinking about using Softlayer’s DNS, but since I encountered problems the very first time I tried to use it, I decided I didn’t trust it.
Furthermore, they’re ridiculously paranoid about “unauthorised” anything, which means they want to confirm your name as the listed contact in WHOIS. Since I often control domains registered in various names, this is annoying and more trouble than it’s worth.
Softlayer are good but DNS is too critical to outsource IMO. RackSpace, yeah, if you can’t trust them .. who can you trust!
Then again, for non-critical domains like this one, I occasionally outsource, this one is done via EveryDNS who have been pretty damn good, and easy. I’m using BIND for “business” domains but thinking of moving to PowerDNS, which puts the zone files into MySQL so you can administer it via web interface. I actually made a very basic rails scaffold to do it .. works well, but I don’t quite trust it enough for production use yet …
In the future I’d like to write my own DNS app, actually. I’d like to be able to point to different IPs according to requesting location. Seems like moving to a DB backend is a good first step!
October 8th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Yes, that’s critical. I wouldn’t wait either. The Rackspace interface is good enough for 95% of everything I’ve ever needed to do. The thing I haven’t been able to do is add SPF records, so I just ask them to do it and, being Rackspace, they usually do it for you within 10 or 20 minutes.
May 4th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Hi Sho,
As an alternative to DNS Stuff I have been working on a site DNS Right. I have created a similar list of tools which is growing all the time. I would love to get your feedback and I am taking requests for tools to be created.
Please be patient as I am not a web developer or even a programmer. I am a systems admin who used DNS Stuff all the time.
Please let me know what you think.
Regards
Simon
August 26th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Hi Sho,
i actually use DNSQueries as their “domain health check” satisfies my needs!
Regards
Bidone