What is SOA (Start of Authority) record?
The SOA means Start Of Authority. The SOA record defines the beginning of the authority DNS zone and specifies the global parameters for the zone. Every DNS zone registered in ClouDNS must have an SOA (Start of Authority) record. There is one SOA record per zone.
The SOA record has the following structure:
- Serial number - The revision number of this zone file. Increment this number each time the zone file is changed. It is important to increment this value each time when a change is made so that the changes will be distributed to any secondary DNS servers. In our system, the serial number is automatically incremented on each DNS zone change.
- Primary name server (NS) - The host name for the primary DNS server for the zone. The Primary NS, set by default, is ns11.cloudns.net. If you enter an invalid primary name server, it will be changed back to ns11.cloudns.net
- DNS admin e-mail - The e-mail address of the person, responsible for administering the domain's zone file. If you enter an invalid e-mail for DNS administrator, it will be changed back to support@cloudns.net.
- Refresh Rate - The time in seconds that a secondary DNS server waits before querying the primary DNS server's SOA record to check for changes. The refresh rate varies from 1200 do 43200 seconds.
- Retry Rate - The time in seconds that a secondary server waits before retrying a failed zone transfer. Usually, the retry rate is less than the refresh rate. The default value is 1800 seconds. The retry rate varies from 180 to 2419200 seconds.
- Expire time - The time in seconds that a secondary server will keep trying to complete a zone transfer. If this time expires before a successful zone transfer, the secondary server will expire its zone file. The secondary will stop answering queries, as it considers its data too old to be reliable. The default value is 1209600 seconds.
- Default TTL - The minimum time-to-live value applies to all resource records in the zone file. This value is supplied in query responses to inform other servers how long they should keep the data in the cache. The default value is 3600 seconds (1 Hour).
Support of SOA records
ClouDNS provides full support for SOA records. Each DNS zone has a SOA record, but the main settings - admin mail, primary name server and so on can be changed only by customers with active non-free subscription. All DNS hosting plans here includes SOA record management:
How to start managing SOA records with ClouDNS?
- Open free trial account from here - free for 30 days, regular price $2.95/month for 25 dns zones (both reverse dns and domain names)
- Verify your e-mail address
- Log into your control panel
- Create new Master DNS from the [add new] button - read more here
- Click on the SOA settings icon and configure it as you need
How to manage the SOA record - Step by Step video: