Overview
DNS is the technology that allows your domain to point to a specific IP address and allows the server listening on it to host your domain. There are several different types of records, but the most commonly used ones are:
- A - Used to link a domain or subdomain to an IPv4 address.
- AAAA - Used to link a domain or subdomain to an IPv6 address.
- CNAME - Used to link a domain or subdomain to another domain or subdomain.
For most purposes, you’ll only need to use A and AAAA records.
Locating your public IP address
Each DreamCompute instance in the US-East 2 cluster is assigned a public IPv4 and IPv6 address.
You can view these addresses in two ways:
- On the Instances page of the DreamCompute dashboard
- Using the OpenStack command line client:
[user@localhost]$ openstack server list +--------------------------------------+---------+--------+------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------+ | ID | Name | Status | Task State | Power State | Networks | +--------------------------------------+---------+--------+------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------+ | 10a3b11b-dc2f-42a2-b5d8-84508a5156a5 | website | ACTIVE | - | Running | public=208.113.128.37, 2607:f298:5:101d:f816:3eff:fe79:8c72 | +--------------------------------------+---------+--------+------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------+
If you have multiple instances, you will have multiple public IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. You will need to track which addresses host which websites or other services.
Adding IP addresses to your domain in the DreamHost panel
To add a new IP address:
- Set your domain to 'DNS Only'. See the Setting your domain to 'DNS Only' article for more information.
- Make sure your domain is already hosted. See the Adding a website and hosting article for more information on how to add hosting to a domain.
- Create a new A record for the domain or subdomain. See the Adding custom DNS records for more information.
- Create additional A records as needed for domains you wish to host on your instance. You can also create an A record for the non-www version of your site URL. All you need to do is leave the 'Host' field blank.
Waiting for DNS propagation
After the DNS entries are saved, the DNS must propagate which can take several hours. The default TTL (time-to-live) for DreamHost nameservers is 5 minutes, so any change to your DNS records should be updated nearly everywhere around the world within that time.