With the latest HostBill release we’ve introduced new add-on to our Plesk module: Plesk DNS Helper.

Plesk DNS Helper extension is shipped with Plesk module to help you connect your Plesk installations with one of the HostBill-supported DNS services:

• Power DNS
• Power DNS Slave Zones
• OnApp DNS
• cPanel DNS
• …or any other DNS HostBill supports

Why may you need this?

Plesk handles DNS really well, but it’s more suited for single-install deployments (as each install comes with its own DNS server). There is a Plesk Multiserver extension, but if you feel it’s not right for you and you plan to deploy multiple Plesk instances you’d most likely want to manage single DNS server (master) rather than multiple ones. Also, if you want to hook up your PowerDNS to store slave zones, while your Plesk would keep master zone records – this is where our Plesk/HostBill DNS helper kicks in.

How does it work?

For this extension to work you need to setup DNS templates to use your actual master nameserver (i.e. Plesk, Power DNS, cPanel DNS) in your Plesk installations. Then install our Plesk extension and point it to your HostBill install. Any time new zone is created / updated / deleted in Plesk, our extension notifies HostBill about it and HostBill then “decides” what to do next. It can:

• Push this zone to real master nameserver
• Notify secondary nameserver to create/update slave zone
• After exporting such zone, HostBill can assign it to the related customer

As a result:

• Slave DNS (any supported by HostBill) will be notified automatically about new zones in Plesk, or:
• Plesk DNS will not be used to handle DNS queries, but as a source of data for actual DNS server that handles requests.
  With this approach you can benefit from flexible & automated DNS templates built into Plesk on any central DNS server you wish to use with it.

Configuring the module

The DNS Helper is a free add-on to HostBill Plesk module shipped with the module, to be installed in your Plesk Admin Panel. Detailed instructions on how to configure the module can be found in module documentation.