Should I Host My DNS, or Use Liquid Web’s?

Liquid Web provides two types of DNS service: hosting your own private nameservers on your fully-managed server, or using Liquid Web’s nameserver cluster. While the linked articles show how to set each of those options up, they do not give an overview of when either of those options might be in your best interests.

Private Nameservers

The main advantage of hosting your own nameservers on your server is ease of access. If you need to make a DNS change, it is a simple matter to log into your control panel and update a record. Need to add a CNAME record? A few minutes later, that CNAME will be headed out into the wider world.

The main disadvantage is this: should you run into problems on your server that take your nameservice offline, all of your sites will be down until it can be brought up. As services go, BIND is extremely reliable, but other problems on the server can interfere with it. Usually the type of problems that would cause this (e.g., hard drive failure, a process taking up all the server’s memory, etc.) would themselves bring the site down.

Liquid Web’s Nameserver Cluster

Liquid Web’s nameserver cluster is designed to be much more robust than a single server. Redundant servers in multiple physical locations are more reliable than one server performing multiple tasks.

Your zones can easily be managed in the Networking section of the manage.liquidweb.com interface. The interface is different from WHM’s, but is fairly intuitive. If you have questions about managing your DNS on Liquid Web’s nameservers, do not hesitate to open a ticket through the manage interface, or contact us using the methods below.