Your own nameservers and DNS zones
Dashmox can be the authoritative DNS for the domains it hosts, which means one place to change a record instead of two. This covers where zones and records live in the panel, and what it takes to run your own nameservers rather than your registrar's.
Where it lives
Two views, and they do different jobs.
Authoritative DNS appears in two places, and knowing which you want saves a lot of hunting. On the server, Zones on this server lists every zone the machine answers for. On a website, the same section edits that one website's own zone, under Managed records.
A zone can only be claimed by the website that owns the domain, so one customer cannot create a zone for a name that belongs to another.
Records
What a record is made of here.
Adding a record asks for four things: Name, Type, Value and TTL in seconds. Eight types are answered for, which is what a hosting domain actually needs. The value is checked for the type, so a mistake is a sentence about the field rather than a zone that loads and does not work.
| Type | What it is for | The value looks like |
|---|---|---|
| A | The IPv4 address a name points at. | 203.0.113.10. Anything that is not an IPv4 address is refused. |
| AAAA | The IPv6 address a name points at. | 2001:db8::10. Must be IPv6; an IPv4 address here is refused. |
| CNAME | One name that follows another. | example.com. Never on the zone apex: a CNAME there would override every other record on it, mail included. |
| MX | Where mail for the domain is delivered. | 10 mail.example.com., which is a priority then a target. Priority 0 to 65535, lower is preferred. |
| TXT | SPF, DKIM, DMARC and domain verification. | v=spf1 a mx ~all. 1 to 1024 bytes, on one line. |
| SRV | Where a named service lives. | 10 5 5060 sip.example.com., which is priority, weight, port and target. The first three are 0 to 65535. |
| CAA | Which authorities may issue certificates for the domain. | 0 issue "letsencrypt.org": flags, then issue, issuewild or iodef, then the value. Flags 0 to 255, value 1 to 255 bytes. |
| NS | Delegating a subdomain to other nameservers. | ns1.example.net. The zone’s own nameservers are managed by the server and cannot be set here. |
A worked set for a domain served here, with mail:
example.com. A 203.0.113.10 3600 www.example.com. A 203.0.113.10 3600 example.com. MX 10 mail.example.com. 3600 mail.example.com. A 203.0.113.10 3600 example.com. TXT v=spf1 a mx ~all 3600
The limits
What a zone may hold.
| Limit | Value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| TTL | 60 to 86400 seconds | Below a minute nothing caches usefully; above a day a change takes too long to take effect. 3600 is the default. |
| Values per name and type | 20 | Five mail servers is a lot; twenty is past any real use. |
| Managed values per zone | 100 | A whole hosting domain fits comfortably. |
| TXT value | 1 to 1024 bytes | A DKIM key fits; a pasted certificate does not. |
One rule catches people out: TTL is shared by every value in the same name and type. Two A records on the same name are one set with one TTL, not two records with two, and giving them different TTLs is refused rather than one of the two quietly winning. Changes are saved with Apply change.
Deleting a zone asks you to type its name back, because a zone removed by accident takes every name in it off the internet at once.
Nameservers
Running your own nameservers.
Serving your own zones is only half of it. The other half is your registrar pointing at you, and that is where your own nameservers come in: names like ns1 and ns2 on a domain you control, each with an address, set in the panel rather than in a configuration file.
- Set the nameserver names and their addresses in the panel, under Nameservers.
- Register those names at your registrar for the domain they belong to, with the same addresses. Registrars usually call this registering a host or glue.
- Point each hosted domain at them, at the registrar for that domain.
- Wait. A delegation change is not instant, and the old answer stays cached until it expires.
Every zone carries a Serial, which changes when the zone does. If a secondary or a checking tool disagrees with the panel, comparing serials tells you whether it has caught up.
When Dashmox is authoritative for a domain, it publishes the MX, SPF and DMARC records for you when mail is turned on, and signs outgoing mail with DKIM. If your DNS is elsewhere, the panel shows you the values to add. See email DNS records.
Pointing a domain at a website for the first time is covered in hosting your first website.
Your servers, with nothing on them counted.
The whole panel is free on one server, with no limit on websites, mailboxes, DNS zones or customer accounts. Pro carries five servers and Business as many as you run.