Setting up DNS for a dedicated server or VPS with Godaddy

The series of blogs I write is actaully a lot of tech support questions that are common. This question gets bonus points because it is actually very difficult to explain over the phone due to the complexity in which DNS works. That being said pictures are worth their weight in gold. For this reason I have included the pictures below as well captions explaining what you need to do.

First off this is the domain menu. If you look here, the name servers are already defined. Chances are that unless you have a new domain, they will be pointed to the DNS of your host or your old server. What we are going to do is scroll all the way down the page, at the bottom left where it says “Host Summary” then click “Add.” This will open the next menu.

There are two fields we are going to edit here. The first one is for the Host record that the DNS server is going to be called. Normally I use “NS1” and “NS2.” don’t sweat capitals or not here, it’s not case sensitive. The other field we need to change is the one labeled “Host IP 1.” After this is done, we click “ok” and simply repeat the procedure for the secondary name server. When I set a new dedicated up I prefer to set it up with the first two IPs as NS1 and NS2 respectively.

Now that this has been done, we can finally add our name servers. Please note that if the other information hasn’t been updated in Godaddy’s information that it can take some time for it to allow you to do this. If you have NS1 and NS2 showing up in the Hosts Summary but it gives you an error about the name server not existing this is why. If you already have this set up, the only other change required is to change the Host Records so that the IPs are pointing to the new server and wait on propagation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.