How to run a DNS hosting through a droplet?

March 13, 2017 1.4k views
DNS Ubuntu 16.04
0763a7031c507e3823b542e13cda530f77142dcd
By:
dionedomingo

Is anyone running a DNS hosting through a droplet?

We use EPP to register and manage domains for our clients through whmcs and
our provider is dropping their support for dns management through epp where we can only set nameservers instead.

We are considering on running our own dns hosting for clients with web/email forwarding options through a droplet. Perhaps bad idea since we have to write a module or use any existing so clients can modify their dns through whmcs client area.

is this possible? how would you guys do it instead?

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1 Answer
jtittle1 March 13, 2017
Accepted Answer

@dionedomingo

When it comes to setting up a DNS cluster, PowerDNS would probably be the easiest to work with as it has a built-in API that you can use to create a module for WHMCS (if there's not already one).

Ideally, you'd setup two, three, or more Droplets and install PowerDNS on each one. This would be a standard master/slave setup (replication), though you could setup something more robust, it all really depends on what you need and how many domains you're hosting or plan to host.

There's an existing guide here at DigitalOcean that details how to go about setting up PowerDNS, so I'd take a look at it to get familiar. It was written for Ubuntu 14.04, though it should work the same with Ubuntu 16.04 or 16.10.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-dns-replication-on-a-slave-powerdns-server-on-ubuntu-14-04

The PowerDNS API can be found here:

https://doc.powerdns.com/md/httpapi/README/

How To Configure DNS Replication on a Slave PowerDNS Server on Ubuntu 14.04
by Wayne Hartmann
In this tutorial we will learn how to set up PowerDNS in a master/slave configuration with automatic replication from the master DNS server to the slave. This tutorial is the second tutorial in our PowerDNS series for Ubuntu.
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