Overview of DNS management in Ensim Pro

Recognizing the business need for flexible and distributed name server configurations, Ensim Pro has enhanced and extended its DNS capabilities to provide for complex hosting requirements. Ensim Pro enables distinctive name server configurations for different sites and allows for delegated zone management. It also maintains a detailed log of all DNS-related actions and events that you can use to identify and resolve issues.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the mechanism that translates Internet domain names preferred by users, such as example.com, into IP addresses used by computers, such as 10.0.0.1. This translation is required because the network layer of the Internet uses IP addresses to identify domains; however, Internet users prefer to use names rather than IP addresses.

- Note: You can manage zones in Ensim Pro only if your service provider has enabled zone management for your account. If zone management is enabled for your account, the DNS option is displayed in the shortcuts section of the Home page. Further, your ability to manage zones and their records depend on the policy settings configured by your service provider. For example, if your service provider has disabled the add zone setting in the policy file, you will be unable to add zones. Contact your service provider if you want the settings changed.

# DNS management in Ensim Pro

To perform domain name and IP address translations efficiently, DNS has a distributed architecture composed of many hierarchical DNS name servers. Each DNS name server is responsible for both name-to-IP-address translations (called forward lookups) and IP-address-to-name translations (called reverse lookups). Each DNS name server manages the lookups for domain name spaces. In DNS, these domain name spaces are referred to as zones. The term zone is used to denote information, such as host records, about a domain.

A reverse lookup uses the IP address to find the domain name.

A forward lookup uses a domain name to find the IP address.

To make a domain accessible to the Internet, the domain name must be registered with at least two DNS name servers: a Master DNS master and a Slave DNS server (or backup name server). You specify the master name server and the slave name server for the domain when you create a domain.

The slave name server provides backup service when the master name server is unavailable. It receives its data for a domain from the master name server.

The master name server is the primary server that serves requests for the domain.

- Important: Before you create a domain, make sure you have registered the domain.

Ensim Pro implements the BIND DNS protocol enabling it to act as a name server. The name server settings determine the name resolution and zone management capabilities of the Ensim Pro DNS server. You can configure the Ensim Pro server to function as any of the following name servers:

- Master name server

- Slave name server

- Forward name server

# Managing DNS zones for your domain

If your service provider has enabled you to perform DNS-related actions for domains, you can:

- View and modify SOA settings for a zone

- View the list of zones

- Add, refresh, and remove zones

- Add, update, and remove zone records

- View and remove DNS logs