Where do you point all your domain names?

[Koldov]

Bit of a strange question maybe, but there are other questions linked...

 

We have a domain name 'schoolname.org.uk' and have our website on that domain name (wrong terminology probably). A bit messy as we have the domain name with our registrar and the website hosted by another company.

 

We also have a couple of other domain names:

 

schoolname.sch.uk - which I created an O365 tenant on.

 

schoolname.co.uk - which I created a Google Workspace tenant on.

 

I wanted both of those to point to our website (just for completeness and to make sure that if anyone typed one in to the internet they would be directed to our website) and created a DNS A record at our domain host for WWW to point to the correct server (as directed by our website host). Admittedly the advice was to create WWW and naked A records in DNS, but I didn't add naked records due to not knowing what impact this would have on the services attached to the domains.

 

Recently our website was unavailable due to the SSL certificate expiring and not being auto renewed. According to our website host, this was due to the secondary domains not having a naked A record pointing to their servers (only a WWW A record) and as the SSL certificate auto renewal process was expecting all domains on the subscription to have a naked record it failed.

 

Options are to create naked A records in DNS for the secondary domains - but will this affect the services attached to them (O365 & Google - especially Google as we have gone GMail exclusively).

 

Remove the secondary domains from the subscription and point them elsewhere (not sure where though?).

[john]

The question is do you have any records already in place that are for root eg schoolname.co.uk already set on an A record to 12.34.56.78 in your DNS? If yes what is it to and do you use it / need it? If yes then maybe a problem if not or doesn't have one then it should be fine to set to the A record required for the domain.

[jthompson]

The MX records for your domain(s) will govern where emails are routed to. Other related maily things like SPF, DKIM, etc. will have their own specific TXT records, so none of that will get upset by the changes that your web-hosting provider is suggesting. We have a bunch of different things all hanging off our domain name: our Google and M365 tenancies, as well as additional DKIM records for other mail senders (sendgrid, freshworks, etc.). Our naked A record points to our website host.

[dmj]

Your website/services DNS records should almost always be CNAME records that point to your server/load balancer A records.

I can't think of a good reason why you would point schoolname.sch.uk directly at a server/LB ip address.

[jthompson]

A CNAME on the root domain? Doesn't that wipe out any A or MX records also on the root?

[dmj]

A CNAME on the root domain? Doesn't that wipe out any A or MX records also on the root?

 

on any services like

service1.schoolname.sch.uk -> servername as a CNAME then point the server to the server IP as an A record.

 

If you have an MX record on that domain you can't use a CNAME IIRC, but we tend to prefix with www

[jthompson]

That makes sense. Our www CNAME points to a name for our website host, but our domain root has an A record pointing to their IP. For a larger-scale hosting provider, I can see why relying on an IP address remaining static could end in something breaking when IPs get churned about.

 

I think the OP was specifically asking about having an A record on the domain root(s) and whether that would break anything for them. I can only see it breaking something if they're already needing those naked domains to point to somewhere else, which I suspect that they're not.

[KK20]

we have three domains, on primary, one historical and one is the .sch.uk we can email on all three via our 365. We use a 3rd party DNS (dnsmadeeasy) as that is compatible with my ACME letsencrypt scripts. Lots of CNAME pointing to whatever we need on any of the domains - MIS, sharepoint, papercut mobility, VPN, website.

 

I recommend getting letsencrypt sorted, it does two things, one saves money and two makes you get a hold on your domains and DNS.