Friday 23 March 2007

SBS and Internet DNS - Verify the Registrar's DNS Info!

We have setup a number of Internet hosting environments on SBS over the years. Everything from Web, e-mail, and more.

One of the pickles that we run into for our Internet RWW access is where to host the DNS?

For many of us, we would apply to the ISP our client uses for Internet connectivity to add an (A) Record along the lines of: rww.mydomain.com and associate it with the static IP on the Internet facing side.

Some may use a DNS rerouting service of some sort.

Whenever we run into DNS issues for RWW, e-mail or other services, an excellent Web based utility to help troubleshoot any kind of DNS issue can be found at: Men&Mice.com.

One situation we have run into, and the only one so far I might add, with one of our new clients at the time, was a fellow who used to work with them who registered the domain, setup the SOA, MX, and DNS facing the Internet on his servers, but then setup the client with an ISP who ALSO setup a SOA, MX, and DNS pointing to their own servers.

We setup the SBS server based on the ISP information. It never dawned on us to check with Internic.ca or Internic.org for a split DNS setup like this.

When we started running into e-mail reception problems, after a bunch of troubleshooting with both the ISP and us on the SBS box, the above setup was finally discovered.

We contacted the fellow who setup his servers to point the MX records to the ISP's servers, and this fixed the e-mail issue.

So, lesson learned. We now verify every DNS setup for any client we are going to install a new SBS or Exchange server for. We just never know the mind of those who had their hands in the pot before us!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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