Thread: Backup NS servers

Anyone have any experience with setting up a 2ndary server for backing up your primary servers NS records?

Hi, yes I did this with DNSMadeEasy and it works very well.

Basically you just sign up with them and point their DNS servers (running bind) to your Master.

If both servers are running cPanel there is an easy way to establish a trust relationship between the two. Two cPanel servers can also do DNS clustering to synchronize records.

Nope one is running directadmin

If both servers are running BIND then it can be done the old fashioned hard way via the command line, editing config files. I wouldn't know how it's done, but there's a way to do it manually.

lol yeah I know there is a way, trying to figure out how or if there is an easy script

Maybe the rsync command would do it. Assuming the primary DNS is the one with the 'main' records, and the secondary DNS wants to syncronize with it, you maybe could log into the primary DNS server's shell as root and do something like this:

Code:

cp -rf /var/named /root/named-bak
rsync -ae ssh /var/named/ root@secondaryserverip:/var/named/ --exclude=named.ca --exclude=data
(login as root on secondaryserverip when prompted)
cp /etc/named.conf /root/named.conf.bak
rsync -ae ssh /etc/named.conf root@secondaryserverip:/etc/named.conf
(restart both nameservers, restore the backups if there are any problems.

That should theoretically backup your stuff and synchronize it. The second line transfers the zone files over. That's also assuming the source and destination have the exact same file and folder structure for zones and config file. There might be problems if the config file has to have different allow rules in each one. If anything fails, restore the backups on the primary nameserver. If this or something similar works, put it in a shell script and them cron it.

This is not tested, though. You might want to have someone else look at my idea.

Before cPanel I used to just copy and paste lots of stuff to create zones files and config entries. With two cPanel servers you just click some things and it automagically syncs them.