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I feel like that was NOT worded well, but here is my current predicament.

I recently had a GoDaddy dedicated server, and decided after their customer support failed to do anything but disappoint, to switch to Rackspace.

We have 2 ns records that point to our godaddy server, and we have a few sites left on the server, that rely on it for their DNS zones, and the owners of the domains fail to respond to us.

So, the question is, if I need to transfer the sites off of the OLD godaddy NS, can I point the A records from my ns1.domain.com and ns2.domain.com to match up with IP addresses of the Rackspace nameservers? OR, do I cname my NS records to match the rackspace ones?

I DO know that this isn't advised, either method, but I need to get these sites moved before Godaddy tries charging another $2k for the server.

lanemiller
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This depends largely on how you handle your NS records.

If all your clients' sites point at ns1.yourcompany.com / ns2.yourcompany.com just change the IPs of those servers (including any glue records created through your registrar) and you're fine -- though you should keep the GoDaddy server running for at least a few days after making the switch for safety.

If all your clients' sites have their own domain as the NS domain (ns1.clientsdomain.com / ns2.clientsdomain.com) your clients MUST update the glue records at their registrar, or their DNS will break when you decommission the GoDaddy server.
If this is the case all you can do is send a whole bunch of warnings to your clients (give them 15-30 days to take care of it, and with each reminder tell them "YOUR SITE WILL CEASE TO WORK IF THIS ISSUE IS NOT ADDRESSED IN A TIMELY MANNER".

From experience doing DNS server migrations I can tell you that around 5% of my clients did not respond in a timely manner, so have extra support staff available (or be ready to take the calls yourselves) in the event someone's site blows up.

Note that under no circumstances should you be pointing NS records at CNAMEs. This is Bad, Wrong, and May Break The Internet. (See this other question on doing exactly that for why, with RFC references.)

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voretaq7
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  • Note that this answer assumes that both your old (GoDaddy) and new (Rackspace) server are serving correct DNS for all of these zones... – voretaq7 Mar 19 '12 at 17:15
  • Yes, both are, are they are pointed to my own domain. ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com. Both servers are serving correct DNS zones, and all of the site files are there. Thanks for the input!! – lanemiller Mar 19 '12 at 17:26