One of the useful features that we offer with cPanel & WHM is the ability to run your own DNS server . The nameserver features we have provided in the past have included PowerDNS, MyDNS, BIND, and NSD. With the release of cPanel & WHM Version 78, we are deprecating NSD and MyDNS. New installations of cPanel & WHM version 78 will not allow you to select the NSD or MyDNS nameservers. Our long-term goal is to remove these options from the product in version 88. The plan moving forward is to dedicate time and resources to improving the back-end of PowerDNS, making it more reliable and robust for you and your customer’s DNS needs. Let’s talk about what PowerDNS is and the added benefits it provides.
PowerDNS
PowerDNS (sometimes referred to as pdns) is open-source DNS software that offers high performance with very low memory requirements. cPanel’s implementation of PowerDNS reads DNS data from the BIND files and stores DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extension) data in an SQLite database. This makes our implementation of PowerDNS compatible with most of cPanel’s DNS management tools. PowerDNS also allows you to use DNSSEC with your domain’s DNS records, adding a layer of security to your domain’s DNS records by using digital signatures and cryptographic keys to validate the DNS responses’ authenticity. These signatures help protect clients from attacks such as spoofing or a Man in the Middle attack.
Why Move From MyDNS and NSD?
Aside from the aforementioned benefits of using PowerDNS, the short answer is that the software for MyDNS has not been updated since 2015. With outdated software comes the prospects of malware infection, compromises, and other issues that could result in a security breach of some sort. By narrowing the number of options available to serve DNS within cPanel & WHM, we can focus our attention on improving features and testing for the remaining options.
One of the more popular asks for improving PowerDNS is to add MySQL support for the PowerDNS backend. If this feature is one that you would like to take advantage of, please navigate to the Feature Request and vote on this use-case, or submit your own!
Ready to make the switch?
Moving to PowerDNS is incredibly easy. All you have to do is Navigate in WHM to the ‘Nameserver Selection’ interface, and adjust the server selection to PowerDNS. Our software handles the migration for you!
If you have any questions or concerns about PowerDNS or the deprecation of MyDNS and NSD or want to discuss this topic further, please join us on the cPanel Forums, on our official Slack and Discord channels, or the Official cPanel Subreddit.