Standard DNS/Secondary DNS Conversion

As your needs grow and change, you may find that you need to move from one of our DNS services to the other. Since Dyn Standard DNS and Secondary use the same set of nameservers, it is relatively easy to switch between services; however, there is more than one way to do it.

Typically, you have two options: a painless changeover that can take a few days, but loses no queries, or a rapid changeover that can be completed in a couple of hours in exchange for a couple of hours of downtime. The instructions for both types of transitions can be found below.

“I can’t afford downtime!” – Lossless Transition

Dyn Standard DNS to Secondary DNS

1. Submit a delegation change to remove our nsX.mydyndns.org nameservers and replace them with your own primary nameserver.
2. Wait four days. This will ensure no queries are coming to our nameservers for your domain.
3. Cancel the Dyn Standard DNS zone through the zone’s configuration page.
4. Create a new Secondary DNS zone for your domain.
5. On the Preferences page for your Secondary DNS zone, click Force Activation. This will force our servers to transfer the zone file from your primary nameserver.
6. Wait two hours for the preactivation to take effect. (You can test our servers using dig queries for your domain’s SOA to verify that they are answering.)
7. Add our ns2 through ns5.mydyndns.org nameservers to your domain’s delegation.

Secondary DNS to Dyn Standard DNS

1. Submit a delegation change to remove our nsX.mydyndns.org nameservers from your domain, leaving only your primary nameserver.
2. Wait four days. This will ensure no queries are coming to our nameservers for your domain.
3. Cancel the Secondary DNS zone for your domain through the zone’s configuration page.
4. Create a new Dyn Standard DNS zone for your domain. Configure the zone.
5. On the Preferences page of your Dyn Standard DNS zone, click Force Activation. This will force our servers to load your zone file prior to delegation.
6. Wait two hours for the preactivation to take effect. (You can test our servers using dig queries for your domain’s SOA to verify that they are answering.)
7. Add our ns1 through ns5.mydyndns.org nameservers to your domain’s delegation and remove your primary nameserver from the list. (Ensure that your primary nameserver is still answering for up to four days after the change to ensure it still answers cached queries.)

“Downtime isn’t important; I don’t want to wait.” – Rapid Transition

Dyn Standard DNS to Secondary DNS

1. Submit a delegation change to remove ns1.mydyndns.org and replace it with your primary nameserver.
2. Cancel your Dyn Standard DNS zone through the zone’s configuration page.
3. Create a Secondary DNS zone for your domain.

Secondary DNS to Dyn Standard DNS

1. Submit a delegation change to add ns1.mydyndns.org to your domain, and remove your primary nameserver from the list.
2. Cancel your Secondary DNS zone through the zone’s configuration page.
3. Create a Dyn Standard DNS zone for your domain.