Whenever you want to connect a domain to a web or mail server, you'll need to update the domain's DNS records. That means:
🏠 If you migrate your website to a new hosting provider and it receives a new IP address, you need to update the DNS records.
📫 If you want to create a mailbox for your domain, certain DNS records are required to successfully connect the domain to the mail server.
To give you a better understanding of how DNS records work and which record types fulfill which function, we've summarized the most important information about the following record types below:
A records and AAAA records
An A record and an AAAA record basically serve the same purpose: to connect your domain to a web space, i.e. a web server on which a website is hosted. This web space is always referenced in the form of an IP address.
A records always refer to IPv4 addresses, which look like this:
94.131.145.96
AAAA records also refer to IP addresses but to IPv6 and not IPv4 addresses. IPv6 addresses look like this:
2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7344
If your web space uses an IPv4 address, only the A record is relevant. If your web space uses an IPv6 address, only the AAAA record is relevant.
💡 Note: You can find the IP address your RAIDBOXES website in the Domains section of the respective BOX overview.
Important when setting A records
A domain usually consists of the main domain, e.g. rbxs.org and the www. subdomain, and www.rbxs.org.
A corresponding A record must be set for both variants. If you want to set an A record for raidboxes.de, for example, you have to enter both the value @ and – for the value www – a record of type A with the IP of the page as the target. Note that sometimes the @ value is simply empty or only shows the domain without www.
MX records
MX records work in a similar way to A records but, instead of connecting a web server to your domain, they connect a mail server. They determine on what mail server the domain can be used to create email addresses or mailboxes.
An MX record always consists of the following components:
Domain: when you set an MX record, you always have to decide which domain the record should apply to. In the vast majority of cases, this is simply your domain name, e.g. example.com.
Type: the type of an MX record must always be MX.
Priority: you will often set several mail servers in the form of MX records. This serves, among other things, to ensure reliability. Priorities are assigned to multiple servers so that the domain knows which server to use. These define the primary, secondary and tertiary mail server. The priorities are usually given in increments of 10. The primary mail server has priority 10, the secondary priority 20, etc. Please note that two mail servers may have the same priority.
Target: the so-called host name of the mail server is entered here.
Important: the target value has a specific characteristic: it is written with a period at the end. If you wanted to set the server mxext1.mailbox.org as the target in your MX record, for example, you have to set the entry as follows (with a period at the end!):
mxext1.mailbox.org.
If you don't include this period, the system interprets the entry as a subdomain and searches for the subdomain mxext1.mailbox.org.raidboxes.de. This subdomain doesn't exist, of course, and the MX record won't work.
💡 If you set an MX record in the RAIDBOXES DNS management, the period is entered automatically.
This is what a finished MX record looks like:
TXT records
Unlike A records or MX records, TXT records have no predefined function. TXT records serve rather as information carriers, similar to a note, but at domain level.
These notes can be used for anything, including to authenticate you as the domain owner. This is exactly what the TXT is used for at RAIDBOXES, for example, when you want to connect a domain to your mailbox. The record contains a verification code that shows the system you are the owner of the domain.
What a TXT record looks like:
Subdomain-Prefix.raidboxes.de 3600 IN TXT "entry contents"
Similar to an MX record, a TXT record consists of:
a domain value, in this case "subdomain prefix"
a Time to Live (i.e. TTL), in this case 3600
a type, in this case TXT
and a target, or the content, in this case entry contents
CNAME records
CNAME records can best be described as redirects. A CNAME record usually points to another A record.
Let's say you set a CNAME record for the subdomain www. with the target example.com. When you request www.example.com, you're directly "forwarded" to the A record for example.com.
What a typical CNAME record looks like:
.raidboxes.de IN A 192.0.2.42 www.raidboxes.de IN CNAME raidboxes.de.
You can already see that the CNAME entry refers to raidboxes.de. When calling up www.rbxs.org, the IP in the A entry of raidboxes.de is called up.
A CNAME record also consists of a domain or a subdomain and a target value. In the example above, the subdomain is www.rbxs.org and the target value is raidboxes.de.
SRV records
SRV records are among the rarer and more complex DNS records. It's especially important to understand how their syntax works, i.e. their internal logic. Once you understand it, you can read and set every SRV record.
What a typical SRV record looks like:
_ldap._tcp.example.com. 3600 IN SRV 10 0 389 ldap01.example.com.
An SRV record is usually made up of eight components:
Service: this is the most complicated part of the records. It's made up three components: the service (in the example above ldap), the protocol (in the example above tcp), and the domain (above example.com).
Time to Live (TTL): this value determines the intervals at which the participating DNS servers reload this record. The TTL is given in seconds. In the example above, the TTL is 3600 seconds or one hour.
IN and SRV: this just indicates it's an SRV record. You can ignore the IN for now, the SRV is relevant, as it indicates what type of record it is.
Priority: similar to MX records, the two-digit number here indicates the priority of the record. If two or more SRV entries are set for the same service, the system knows which one to use first.
Weight: the next number in the row denotes the so-called weight of the record. Similar to the priority, it is used to prioritize the records.
Port: the last numerical value in the series denotes the port, in the example above the TCP port.
Server: the final value determines the server that provides the respective service.
As you can see, the SRV record is a very complex record. Fortunately, the end user doesn't need to fully understand what each part means. It's enough to know which part of the record has which name. This means you can store the SRV record for each service accordingly.
Create an SRV record at RAIDBOXES
The input mask doesn't reflect the logic of the entry. In order to set an SRV record at RAIDBOXES, the actual entry must be deconstructed and entered piece by piece.
Subdomain: the service belongs in this field.
TTL: the TTL goes in this field.
Type: this field covers the values IN and SRV.
Priority: the priority of the record is entered here.
Target: the weight, port and server are entered here as specified in the SRV record, i.e. with spaces between the individual values and a period at the end.