DNS Guru: MX and CNAME

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1

Situation is that I am moving my mail server from the server to a third party host for my hosting company.

The domain (mysite.com) is bought through Yahoo. The name servers are registered through there so i have ns1.mysite.com and ns2.mysite.com pointed to my server.

Now, if company.com is hosting my email, what entries need to be updated? CNAME and MX entires need to forward mail.mysite.com to the new server along with the MX entries need to be changed.

What path does a client requesting mysite.com result with DNS entries?

2

Create an A record for mail.mysite.com with the IP of the company hosting your mail server(or whatever new server is hosting your mail)

Create an MX record pointing to mail.mysite.com

CNAMEs are just aliases that point at other host names…

A Record 10.10.10.25 = mail.mysite.com
MX Record = mail.mysite.com

A CNAME example would be…

CNAME webmail.mysite.com = mail.mysite.com

3

What would the A entry be for if there is a CNAME?

Also, does this need to go on Yahoo Domains or on the main server mysite.com’s dns entries?

4

A records point hosts at IPs

CNAMEs point hosts at hosts

Whatever company you registered the domain with lets you pick DNS servers…you need to add the A record/MX record to those name servers you pointed your domain at…

5

Thanks. That fixed it. The Yahoo settings were right but all the MX entires needed to be added to the server where our own nameservers are hosted.