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I'm not our company's networking person. He is out with an illness for a few weeks. My apologies if this question is ABC simple. I am a little confused by our current setup.

We have a dedicated managed physical server at a colocation provider. The only thing it has on it is a website. No mail. No FTP. When I check the WHOIS record, the registrar shows these name servers:

ns1.{colocation-provider}.com  
ns2.{colocation-provider).com

where {colocation-provider} is the actual name, for example,

ns1.acmecolocation.com

We are moving to a new co-location provider. Can we simply change the namespaces on the registrar's website like this:

ns1.{registrar}.com
ns2.{registrar}.com

where {registrar} would be the actual name of the registrar, e.g.

ns1.registrationsolutions.com
ns2.registrationsolutions.com

and then enter the new public IP address in the appropriate field?

I am not sure why the colocation provider's nameservers were entered there in the first place.

P.S. I am able to reach the new server by editing the hosts file on my PC, and pointing the domain name to the new IP address.

TRomano
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1 Answers1

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The colo's nameservers were in your Whois record because they are providing DNS services for your domain. Yes, you can change nameserver records at the registrar, but before doing that, you need to ensure that the servers you'll change to are ready to host DNS for your zone.

You should consider that changing colos while your network expert is out is likely not a good course of action.

EEAA
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  • The advice you have given me, about the inopportune timing of this, is advice I myself have given :) – TRomano Apr 02 '17 at 14:36
  • I've created an A record and a CNAME record at the new colocation provider in case we need to make the colocation provider the DNS services provider. Testing with the new server (after editing my hosts file) things do seem to be working fine. HTTP and HTTPS are both working smoothly. And there are slight differences (intentional) between the two websites to make clear that I'm not looking at the original server but the new one. – TRomano Apr 02 '17 at 14:36
  • One last test you should do before changing name servers is to use a CLI DNS tool like dig to issue DNS queries for your domain directly against the new colo's nameservers. That will let you verify that the new records you created are working properly. – EEAA Apr 02 '17 at 14:50
  • If you can avoid it, don't use the colo provider as your DNS host. There's no technical reason to do so. You're probably better served in the long run by using the domain Registrar for your DNS. – joeqwerty Apr 02 '17 at 15:25
  • you can also use online testing tools, such as zonemaster.net – Patrick Mevzek Apr 02 '17 at 22:04