Trying to host some sites online. I don’t know the first things about how to setup DNS to point user friendly domain names and sub domains to website ips and ports.
I have an online host but they are hands off for setup.
I don’t have much but I will compensate you for expertise in this area. This may turn into additional pt support work.
Are you trying to be the authoritative DNS for a domain? or is someone else?
More detail would help…
Usually when you register XYZ.com you can point it at a DNS server most places like godaddy and such let you use theirs…At this point you make A records that point at webservers or whatever server you like…You also need to make MX records and point them at a mail server if you want to send/receive as that domain.
In IIS you create a new site…and tell it what domain to listen for XYZ.com you can also add additional hosts the site will listen for like www.xyz.com subdomain.xyz.com
I guess if you give me specifics I can be of more help instead of making generalizations.
Thanks for the help. I will try to give as much info as I can. I was able to do the setup from godaddy to my host in the sky. Now they can manage the routing to my hosted server for basic www and * routing. MX is done, that is forwarded to another service for my email (separate hosting company).
What I want to do is have a few websites on that server but all accessible from user friendly subdomains instead of ip’s and ports.
So I have xyz.com right now. I want to make a demo.xyz.com, dev.xyz.com, etc. Each are one a single iis box right now with ports (80, 8080, etc). A friend told me I should setup another box with minimal ram to just handle DNS/WINS/AD and let that manage the forwarding to my web server. Sounds like a solid plan, but he has a baby due this week and no way to help with setup.
I have the basic IIS setup right now, and it is listening on the public ip my host gave me. My buddy says I only need to provide 1 public IP for my new DNS box and let that route to the various websites on an internal network ip?
Its a Win 2008 server with iis 7 if that helps.
You can setup IIS to run on 1 IP address and listen for as many different hosts as you want…
The only time this will cause issues is for SSLs
Disable the default site in IIS
Create New site blah.xyz.com have it listen on port 80
Create New site abx.xyz.com have it listen on port 80
Point the A records blah.xyz.com -> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx(live ip of webserver)
Point the A records abx.xyz.com -> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
When you point your browser at blah.xyz.com it connects the live webserver IP and your browser does something along the lines of GET blah.xyz.com at which point IIS pulls files from the directory that matches that host name.
You mentioned private IPs…That would come into play if you were using a firewall to do NAT…in which case you would still follow the above setup…
Your firewall would handle NATing public IP -> Private IP.
You would be better off letting another server handle the DNS…GoDaddy or another ISP…
So can I do:
Godaddy -> My Host DNS (*.xyz.com) -> My Hosted serving as DNS for my domain (route) -> My IIS websites
?
My thought was that if I managed it through godaddy then I always have to wait for them to propogate. But if I handle the subdomains/porting on my own then I can manage quick create/destroy development scenarios. It also seems a little more portable in case I decide to switch web hosts.
Since I am using Sharepoint as the dev hosting platform, I don’t think I can have each web instance on port 80…I think it only allows one. So each is hanging off of a separate port number. But I don’t want to have to know that when I hit the site, I’d like it to address and forward from the blah.xyz.com without having to show port 8080 (for example). That always seems crunchy.
Also, my only firewall option right now is software, I can’t add a hardware appliance…so that means Windows Firewall on Win 2008.
There is no way to hide the 8080 you could do a redirect from blah.xyz.com(on port 80) to blah.xyz.com on port 8080…but you have no way to hide that port…
The only way it would work with out the 8080 thing is if you have multiple WAN ips.
I did a quick google search and it appears that you can run multiple sharepoint sites on the same port…
My only thoughts on this is GoDaddy has redundant DNS servers/connections.
I assume that the server you’re running is single homed and not redundant.
You might also want to keep the TTLs low if you plan on making a lot of changes and needing them to propagate quickly.
ok, so my bud was saying a forward could be done to 8080 and that could be masked, but you are shooting a hole in that?
i see what you found on google…that might work but I would have to rejigger how I was going to setup multiple “zones”. Zones in Sharepoint let you have the same site accessed by Win Authentication or Forms Authentication. Basically port 80 right now is for folks on the LAN (like RDC admins) and then it’s “extended” to 8080 for the extranet for normal id/pw logon without Active Directory. You can’t “extend” a site to a port that is in use…Sharepoint admin control simply won’t let you. But if I change my logic for 80 to be extranet zone and 8080 for AD, that should work. Thinking out loud that makes a lot of sense actually.
The only possible issue is that SSL won’t work on a shared IP. I’m not using SSL currently but might be a future consideration. I will look into this, thanks for finding!
OK, so when you talk about redundancy and TTLs and homing you are going way over my head. Are you basically saying to scrap my buds idea to setup my own DNS/WINS/AD server in the sky next to my IIS to manage all of the forwarding, and just manage it all through godaddy?
If I go that route, then I have to provide them with the public IP of the box instead of pointing the A record to the DNS of my hosting company?
I’m in a hosted VM environment. Are there any issues if I have to move to another VM instance (say as the app needs to scale to beefier equipment)? At that point, I’d get another IP for the new instance and I would have to run to godaddy to update? Excuse my ignorance if I am off track there.
it’s really easy to do with an apache2 server on linux 
That won’t help you much though.
You already have your answer, but yeah, you don’t need your own DNS server to handle this. The web server handles it.
I didn’t know people still hosted websites with IIS. :shrug:
You can run sharepoint over apache?
didn’t get that far in the convo Just trying to drop down some linux love
LZ:
So basically I go to godaddy and point the * record to the one IP on the webserver, and let IIS dish out to the correct subdomain?
Or my other option is setup a DNS server which I get the feeling you think is overkill.
Also, I just tested on the Admin panel in Sharepoint and sure enough they have host header options and it let me create another port 80 without yelling at me. Thanks!
Godaddy lets you create subhosts…
So just create A records for blah.xyz.com point it at your public IP and so on for each additional host.
I just tried it with *, I will leave it like that until I settle on user friendly sub domains. It works! Jeez, this is so much easier than I imagined. Thank you for demystifying this stuff.
Do you currently work as a network admin?
Cool post up if you need anymore help…
Network/system engineer something along those lines…
nerd boner
ok, so my host company will allow me to use them for “reverse dns” .what’s that, and do I need it?
Forward DNS is Host name -> IP Address
Reverse DNS is IP address -> Host name
Reverse DNS is usually needed for mail servers…and a few other things…It’s not overly important for a webserver.
I’m having a small problem with the shared IP’s and host headers.
Works fine from HTTP, but Sharepoint also allows for WebDav access to folders so you can just UNC path right into it from the local box and copy files.
The problem is only the main default site (original 80) is identified by a windows ping. The other sites hanging off of the same ip and 80 with different host headers aren’t found in Windows Explorer . I tried adding another port binding, but that only works in HTTP, UNC doesn’t take that.
Anyway I can bind a different machine or netbios name for those additional sites?