Add new DNS zone

This page explains how to add a single DNS Zone or multiple DNS zones with DNS records.

Overview

To create a new DNS Zone, click on Add DNS Zone in the Tools area.
You can add a single DNS Zone to the Client account, multiple DNS Zone names from a local file or multiple DNS Zones with complete DNS Records.

Adding a single DNS zone name

To add a single DNS Zone name, you need to enter all the information required in the Add DNS Zone name section of the page.

DNS Zone name – Here you need to enter a valid DNS Zone name that is unique in the system. You can add a Forward Zone, a Reverse Zone or an E.164 Zone. The name must be unique in the system. Here are some typical examples:

• For forward zones, use the following format: <lower level domain(s)>.<top level domain>; e.g. racksoft.com, wikipedia.org, amazon.co.uk;
• For reverse zones, use the following format: <lower level domain(s)>.IN-ADDR.ARPA or <reverse_ipv6_chunk_nibbles>.IP6.ARPA ; e.g. 2.85.64.IN-ADDR.ARPA, 8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.IP6.ARPA. (/32 = 8 nibbles), or b.a.9.8.7.6.5.0.4.0.0.0.3.0.0.0.2.0.0.0.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1.2.3.4.IP6.ARPA. (/128 = 32 nibbles);
• For E.164 zone, use the following format <lower level domain(s)>.E164.ARPA; e.g. 2.2.3.E164.ARPA; 1.1.1.E164.ARPA.

DNS Zone template – Here you can use the DNS Zone templates available or can choose not to use any template at all.

Template IP – This field is available when a DNS Zone template is selected. All occurrences of [IP] in the DNS Zone template will be replaced by this IP.

DNS Zone type – The type of the DNS Zone can be Master or Slave.

• When the chosen type is Master, the Allow DNS Zone transfer option becomes available and the Slave DNS servers IP addresses option is disabled.
• When the chosen type is Slave, the Transfer DNS Zone from master servers option is enforced and the Master DNS servers IP addresses option becomes available.

Forward Zone – When this option is enabled, this is considered to be a regular zone.

Reverse Zone – When this option is enabled, this is considered to be a zone used for reverse DNS lookup (i.e. a zone in the in-addr.arpa domain or in ip6.arpa domain).

Reverse zone separator -  According to the recommendations specified in RFC 4183, DNS Manager supports both / and - as mask delimiters. The delimiter can be:

• Included in the DNS Zone name, for example 128/25.27.116.87.IN-ADDR.ARPA. or 128-25.27.116.87.IN-ADDR.ARPA. In this case, the delimiter is stored in the data base as provided and the Reverse zone separator option is disabled.
• Not included in the DNS Zone name, for example 3.2.1.IN-ADDR.ARPA. In this case, you can choose the Reverse zone separator / or -. For the Class C(/24) reverse Zones, the separator can always be chose according to your requirements.

E.164 Zone - When this option is enabled, this is considered to be an E.164 zone used for mapping telephone numbers into DNS (i.e. a zone in the e164.arpa domain).

When the chosen type of the DNS Zone is master, the following options are available:

• Allow DNS Zone transfer – When this option is enabled, allowed slave servers will be able to retrieve the Zone information from the master server (in this case the DNS Manager system).
• Slave DNS servers IP addresses – When the Allow DNS Zone transfer option is enabled, you can enter the IP addresses of the slave DNS servers in this text box. Click the plus/minus icons to add/remove slave IP addresses. The DNS Zone will be transferred only to these IP addresses.

When the chosen type of the DNS Zone is slave, the following options MUST BE enabled:

• Transfer DNS Zone from master servers – The DNS Zone information will be transferred from the master DNS servers with the IP addresses set in the field below.
• Master DNS servers IP addresses – Use this text box to specify the IP addresses of the master DNS servers.

The required fields are marked with an asterisk. Click OK to create the new DNS Zone. Click Cancel, if you want to return to the previous page without creating the DNS Zone.

Adding multiple DNS zones with complete DNS records

In order to add multiple DNS Zones with complete DNS Records, click Add DNS Zone, then Full zones from file in the Tools area. The following fields will be displayed:

• Select file – Enter the name of the file that contains the DNS Zone names or click the Browse… button to locate the desired file.

  The uploaded file MUST be in dump format (identical to the file generated by backing up DNS zones in DNS Manager). For more information on the dump file format, please read the Supported Dump File examples appendix.

  A slave zone will acquire it's zone data only after receiving the notification from the respective master zone, or after it is manually reloaded on the server. DNS Manager does not reload slave zones due to the extra overhead involved on busy
  environments, therefore is recommended to setup notifications on master zones.

• Allow DNS Zone transfer – When this option is enabled, allowed slave servers will be able to retrieve the Zone information from the master server (in this case the DNS Manager system).
• Add the following allow transfer IP to master zones - The IP addresses specified in this field will be recorded in the allow transfer clauses of the named.conf file for MASTER DNS zones.
• Add the following master IP - The IP addresses specified in this field will be recorded in the masters clauses of the named.conf file for SLAVE DNS zones.

Click OK to create the new DNS Zone. Click Cancel, if you want to return to the previous page without creating the DNS zone. This may take some time depending on the size of the file you have specified.