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I would like an existing domain to no longer resolve (terrible historical SEO? work, content will move to another domain)

And at the same time only maintain that domains historical email address for a period of time (email is at Rackspace mx1.emailsrvr.com)

And also have a minimum set of DNS records

I have DNS zone access for the domain

Unsure of what to purge or recreate and add back

Found a similar discussion, at serverfault, so it seems to me that this can be done ...DNS: Is it valid to have...

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Phleix
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    What records are you unsure about? If you want nothing but an MX record... delete everything but the MX record. Make sure the hostname that MX record points to resolves (if it's in the same domain you'll need to leave the A record for that in there). –  Aug 01 '14 at 21:28

1 Answers1

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Easy!

Keep the NS, SOA, and MX records. If you have SPF and/or DKIM records, keep those too, but make sure 'a' is NOT one of the options in the SPF. Get rid of any and all A, AAAA, and/or CNAME records.

Example before:

$ORIGIN example.com.
$TTL 7200
@ IN SOA ns1.example.com. hostmaster.example.com. (
                            2014080101      ; Serial
                                  2160      ; Refresh
                                  3600      ; Retry
                                604800      ; Expire
                                  7200 )    ; Negative TTL

@ IN NS ns1.example.com.
@ IN NS ns2.example.com.

@ IN MX 10  mx1.emailsrvr.com.
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ~all"
@ IN SPF "v=spf1 a mx ~all"

@ IN A 192.0.2.1
www IN A 192.0.2.1

Example after:

$ORIGIN example.com.
$TTL 7200
@ IN SOA ns1.example.com. hostmaster.example.com. (
                            2014080102      ; Serial
                                  2160      ; Refresh
                                  3600      ; Retry
                                604800      ; Expire
                                  7200 )    ; Negative TTL

@ IN NS ns1.example.com.
@ IN NS ns2.example.com.

@ IN MX 10  mx1.emailsrvr.com.
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 mx ~all"
@ IN SPF "v=spf1 mx ~all"
Joe Sniderman
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  • If there are `A`/`AAAA`/`CNAME` records that did not relate to the web site in the first place, those may of course still be relevant to keep around. As an example of this, if the `MX` record were to point to a name within the same zone (eg `mail.example.com`) you would of course want to keep the `A`/`AAAA` records for that specific name, also if for instance the canonical hostnames for your server(s) are in there you would want to keep those `A`/`AAAA` records around as well. – Håkan Lindqvist Aug 01 '14 at 22:27
  • @HåkanLindqvist Generally speaking, yes. In the OP's case where the mail is outsourced and the goal is to strip the domain down to the bare minimum necessary to support email, no - unless of course the nameservers are within the domain as well. Although technically in that case, the extra glue records within the zone itself are optional. – Joe Sniderman Aug 01 '14 at 22:30
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    I just wanted to point out that there can exist records that have nothing to do with the web site that should not be removed. However, in the case of the zone `NS` records referring to names within the same zone those `A` records in the zone *are mandatory*. The *glue* is in the parent zone only (along the delegatory `NS` records) and is never served as authoritative data. The `A` records inside the zone are the authoritative records and if they were to somehow not exist your authoritative nameservers will deny their existence if queried for these names which can cause serious problems. – Håkan Lindqvist Aug 01 '14 at 22:39