[...] GG> Summary: domain.com A --> mail server IP GG> domain.com NS --> dns1.primedomain.com GG> domain.com SOA --> dns1.primedomain.com,admin.primedomain.com GG> www A --> NT server IP
This is what I would do with reasons: domain.com A --> web server IP because people will type domain.com. Netscape will try www.domain.com if nothing is listening at www.domain.com, IE won't AFAIK. What seems more elegant, domain.com CNAME --> name of the virtual hosting server, will not work because you cannot CNAME domain.com if you define other RRs under domain.com. www.domain.com CNAME --> domain.com so www works! domain.com SOA --> dns1.primedomain.com,admin.primedomain.com domain.com NS --> dns1.primedomain.com OK. You need another NS preferably on a different T. This is not some paperwork requirement, you want the domain name to resolve even if there is an outage. domain.com 10 MX --> mail server name domain.com 20 MX --> back-up mail server name Always try to accept mail even if the main server goes down (you don't know when the other daemons in the net will bounce queued mail, but you can adjust this on your back-up if there's an outage). On terminology: 'redirection' is not a good term to use in this case. In the context of http, it has a different meaning that does not concern DNS. EG: An http redirect tells a browser that hit www.domain1.com to go to www.domain2.com _at the HTTP level_. This is useful because it enables you to redirect, say, http://company.net/ to http://www.company.com/ and cause the location shown in the browser and remembered in bookmarks to change to http://www.company.com/. hope this helps, BM