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I've read that some people are able to successfully replace their A records with CNAMEs only. Primarily because the IP address of the A record is not static. Are they using a service like DynDNS or DNS Made Easy?

Chris
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3 Answers3

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You can't use only CNAMEs. There needs to be an A record eventually.

However, you can have a CNAME record point to an A record that is outside the zone you're managing. In that case, you only ever need to manage CNAME records for your server and you do not need to update IP addresses.

Meaning if you have server1.example.com A 192.168.1.100, and you manage the example.org zone, nothing stops you from having only a single CNAME record: server1.example.org. CNAME server1.example.com. and thus have no A record pointing to 192.168.1.100 in the example.org zone.

Note that DNS requires A records for some things where you may think CNAMEs would be appropriate.

gparent
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Depending on your DNS configuration, it might not be entirely possible. You can do that for most A record but, if your NS records point to servers that are in the same zone, you will need to use A record for these.

There might be incompatibility with some services as well but for the usual things you place on a personal web domain (mail, web) this isn't going to be any problem.

Stephane
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Like others have already stated, this will work for most records, but one important rule to remember: CNAMES can not coexist with any other records with the same name.

This basically means that you can make 'www.example.com' a CNAME but you can NOT make 'example.com' itself a CNAME, because the zonename itself always has a SOA record with the same name. Some DNS control panels allow you to do this anyway but it results in all sorts of troubles (resolver issues, synchronisation failures, ...)

Gryphius
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