How to test new nameserver before to make it live

Question

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Testing nameserver configuration using it

I'm thinking of changing from my hosting provider nameservers to Route53 (Amazon's distributed nameserver) for several reasons.

I'm currently setting all records like they are on my current host page (I can see my DNS settings but I cannot change them). Since I'm not used to working with Route53's hosted zones, is there a way I can test the new nameserver resolution settings before updating the domain to point to the new nameserver?

For example, I'm not sure if the last dot in CNAME records is necessary or not...

Solution 1

Use dig

dig mydomainname.example @mynewnameserver.example

Solution 2

Set up your name server and then configure a test machine to use it for DNS. I'm not sure what client system you're using, but since I'm on a Windows box, at the moment, a screenshot of where you'd put that new nameserver value on a Windows machine.

Apply those DNS settings to a number of machines for testing purposes, use as normal, and ensure nothing's broken.

Solution 3

You can easily do that using nslookup, the process is next:
1) Enter nslookup
2) Run server $YourDNSServerName where $YourDNSServerName is the one of the DNS servers responsible for your zone at Route53 like nslookup ns-131.awsdns-16.com
3) From there just enter your records and see the responses.

Comments

[CodeShining]

Thanks, it works!! Can you please help me to understand what should i set for these records? @ IN MX 1 aspmx.l.google.com. @ IN MX 5 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com. @ IN MX 5 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com. @ IN MX 10 aspmx2.googlemail.com. @ IN MX 10 aspmx3.googlemail.com. I should leave the domain blank, am I right?

[Logic Wreck]

yes if you're setting MX records for the domain, the domain should be blank.

[Patrick Mevzek]

This will not work. This screen allows you to enter the recursive nameservers you want to use. This is certainly not the way to test new authoritative nameservers (a lot of things will start to break as you will get DNS replies for only a very small subset of names, or even none at all).