How to avoid new DNS hosting issues

Does transferring to a new DNS host cause downtime?

Are there downtime risks when transferring to a cloud-based DNS provider?

We have found that many admins are hesitant to change their provider because they are worried about downtime. If you follow the following three steps, you will experience no downtime and be able to use your new provider within minutes.

#1 Transfer

Constellix offers eight different ways to transfer your domains over to our name servers. In just a few minutes you can transfer your domains whether you're coming from another provider, want to use a zone file or AXFR transfer, or prefer to use the API. Check this chart to see which method is best for you based on your needs and current configurations. Once you find the method best for you, you can follow step-by-step directions here.

#2 Contact Your Registrar

After you add your domain, you will be asked to contact your domain registrar. You domain registrar is the provider you purchased your domain name from. You will need to tell them to point your domain to the Constellix name servers.

Testing... Testing... 123

Before you add records, it is very important that you first run a test to make sure your domain is resolving on Constellix name servers. Use command line to run a simple dig test.

$  dig ns11.constellix.com yourdomain.com

You can use the same command to check for subdomains and even check for a specific record type.

$  dig ns11.constellix.com blog.yourdomain.com A

Ta Da!

If your testing was successful, then you did it! No downtime.Now you can start adding records. You can find tutorials for each record type here.

Please note, that it may take up to 24 hours for these changes to propagate across recursive servers, as they have their own caches that will need to refresh. We recommend waiting up to two days before deleting records from your previous provider or discontinuing your old service.