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Hopefully this makes sense..

We have multiple servers hosting a couple of hundred web sites.

All domain names are controlled mainly by clients and pointed to 1 of our servers using A-Records.

We moved a server with about 70 sites to a different server with different IP address. Which meant us having to access 70 domains and updating A-records.

Is there a way with A-records so we could point the A-record to a hostname instead and then we cntrol the hostname IP to point to the server IP. That way if we ever had to do this again we could just update the hostname IP in 1 place and it all works ?

Many Thanks.

South Coast Web
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  • Not with an A record. That's what CNAME records are for. – jordanm Nov 15 '19 at 22:54
  • @jordanm actually not. While a cname record can be helpful, a cname record DOES NOT point to an A record - although in the case of a subdlmain it may have this affect. You should not use cnames if you don't know how they work as there will be unintended side effects. – davidgo Nov 16 '19 at 04:23
  • There us no way to do this with A records. There us an "alias" record construct which exists in some systems which "flattens" to an A record, but this is dependant on the DNS system used and is not part if the DNS spec. – davidgo Nov 16 '19 at 04:24

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A records cannot direct to a hostname, You should use CNAMES for that.

Although its a pain to have to amend all of those records manually, there may be benefits to maintaining them as-is to allow you to control them independently and reduce the impact of human-error.

From an admin perspective however, replacing them all with CNAME entries directing them to a single A record may be a better choice to reduce admin overhead.

Steve
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