DNS management & clean up

Sideral

New Member
Hi there,

I have a few domains on my VPS and want to clean up the DNS zone but I don't want to break anything.

Question #1
As I'm using Google App for my email, is it secure to remove the following entries:
  • mail (CNAME)
  • webmail (A)
As I have added the entries required by Google App.

Question #2
Also, is it secure to remove those ones:
  • webdisk (A)
  • cpcalendars (A)
  • cpcontacts (A)

Question #3
One of my secondary domain also have the following entries and I was wondering why:
  • _autodiscover._tcp (SRV)
  • _caldav._tcp (SRV)
  • _caldavs._tcp (SRV)
  • _carddav._tcp (SRV)
  • _carddavs._tcp (SRV)
  • _caldav._tcp (TXT)
  • _caldavs._tcp (TXT)
  • _carddav._tcp (TXT)
  • _carddavs._tcp (TXT)
Can someone explain me what they are use for.

Question #4
My secondary domain is only use as staging environment and don't need any email management. In this case, could I remove the (MX) record?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance,

Steve
 
Hi Steve!

Question #1
As I'm using Google App for my email, is it secure to remove the following entries:
  • mail (CNAME)
  • webmail (A)
As I have added the entries required by Google App.

Sure it is! You might consider adding a few cnames though. For instance:
Code:
email   14400   IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
start   14400   IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
calendar        14400   IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.
docs    14400   IN      CNAME   ghs.google.com.

So entering docs.yourdomain.com would take you to Google docs for your domain! ;)

Question #2
Also, is it secure to remove those ones:
  • webdisk (A)
  • cpcalendars (A)
  • cpcontacts (A)

It is indeed!

Question #3
One of my secondary domain also have the following entries and I was wondering why:
  • _autodiscover._tcp (SRV)
  • _caldav._tcp (SRV)
  • _caldavs._tcp (SRV)
  • _carddav._tcp (SRV)
  • _carddavs._tcp (SRV)
  • _caldav._tcp (TXT)
  • _caldavs._tcp (TXT)
  • _carddav._tcp (TXT)
  • _carddavs._tcp (TXT)
Can someone explain me what they are use for.

These are autodiscover records for Outlook and Thunderbird, so when someone is configuring their email client to connect to your email it can automatically configure for it. You can disable the creation of these for all accounts under Tweak Settings | Domains if you don't want them to be created when you create an account. If you're using Google Apps or not using email at all for said domain they can be safely removed.

Question #4
My secondary domain is only use as staging environment and don't need any email management. In this case, could I remove the (MX) record?

Same as above, if you're not using email at all then yes it can be removed. However keep in mind that in order to conform to RFCs for email servers you should support the email addresses: postmaster@, abuse@, webmaster@ etc etc. For your Google Apps domains Google actually monitors those addresses but for others you might want to support them.

Hope that helps!
 
Similar question here, all of my domains nameservers are on Cloudflare. All of the domains use the main IP for email and have MX records on Cloudflare pointing to the hostname. The main IP and the hostname is the only public record on Cloudflare pointing to my server.

I can delete every record except on the server except the A record for the hostname?
 
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