Multiple subdomains, 1 server

[snotwong]

Hi,

I'm a little new to DNS stuff, but learning quickly. My company has recently moved to a new office building and purchased their first server (Win 2k3). I'm in the process of setting it up. My final goal is to:

1. Host our email from the server, using Exchange.
2. Host an FTP site from the same server.
3. Keep our website hosted on our ISP's servers.

The hard part is, this all has to happen on the same domain. So, we have an existing domain name, let's say it's company.com. I'd like the website to remain on

http://www.company.com

(hosted on our ISP's servers), the FTP server to be on ftp.company.com (hosted on our local server) and the mail to be on mail.company.com (hosted on our local server).

I'm confused on how to split up our DNS to make that happen. I'm pretty sure I know how to get the email to be routed to our server (by having our ISP change the MX record of our DNS). However, how would I set up one or more FTP servers on our local server?

Would I have to register a new domain, ftp.company.com? If I was going to set up multiple ftp sites on the server (i.e. ftp1.company.com, ftp2.company.com, ...), would I have to set up the DNS to resolve to different ports of our IP?

Thanks in advance for any help,
-Scott

 

[snotwong]

In doing some research, it looks like the answer may be that I have to set up multiple CNAME records in our DNS record... Does that sound right? If that is correct, then do I need my ISP to set up the CNAME records, or do I need to set up the CNAME records on my local server's DNS server? Would I even have the authority to do that?

 

[ShackDaddy]

Just use all A records. It doesn't matter if there are more than one A record for an IP. CNAMES can make things messy, and to get mail, you will need to point an MX record at an A record, not a CNAME record.

BTW, you don't have any subdomains. You have a domain with a few hosts in it. A subdomain would look like 'mail.subdomain.domain.com'.

Your setup is a very simple one. You only need a single domain: company.com

Have A records at your ISP. Your internal server will have A records, mostly auto-generated, and they will use our internal IPs if you are on a private network. You will add an A record on the inside for 'www' that points to the external web hosting IP.

Most ISPs let you manage the DNS for your domain, or will handle changes for you if you ask.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting