Clarahost Common Issues - Domain Management Suite

For Clarahost web hosting packages - Domain Management Suite FAQ

• How do I know how much web space I have used?
• What is a sub-domain?
• How can I get a receipt for my domain payment?
• What happens if I go over my bandwidth allowance?
• How do I make DNS changes?

How do I know how much web space I have used?

If you login to your Domain Management Suite (DMS) (DMS), you can view how much webspace you have used by clicking on the the domain in question underneath the "Hosting" title on the left of the screen. Then click the "Web" Icon from the top menu. Scroll down until you see "Disk Usage". Below is an example:

Disk Usage

279.78125MB used of the 20480MB allowed
Percentage used 1.37%

What is a sub-domain?

When you purchase a domain such as clarahost.co.uk, the www. that precedes it is known as a sub-domain. You can add additional sub-domains to your website, for example in the website address http://admin.clarahost.co.uk, "admin" is a sub-domain. When you create a new sub-domain through your Domain Management Suite (DMS), you will notice a new folder within your "public" folder when you FTP in, with the name of your sub-domain. Storing files in this folder works in precisely the same way as your www folder.

How can I get a receipt for my domain payment?

If you login to your Domain Management Suite (DMS) and select the 'Invoices' link on the main menu, you can print receipts for all the payments you have made in respect to that particular domain.

What happens if I go over my bandwidth allowance?

If you use your allotted bandwidth for the month, you are in danger of losing availability of your website for the rest of the month, so please be sure to monitor this regularly. If you find that you are consistently using the majority of your bandwidth, you may wish to consider upgrading your package. You can do this through your Domain Management Suite (DMS).

How do I make DNS changes?

Any DNS changes, be they CNAME, A record, & MX record changes that you would like to point to an external server can also be done via the Domain Management Suite (DMS). Once logged in, select the domain name you wish to work on from the left hand side, then choose the Domains button from the top row of icons. You will then find "Edit DNS records"

This reveals the DNS editing tool that allows you to make the changes you may require.

As the above photo illustrates there are different TABS along the top, for the different types of record you may wish to add.

Beneath that is the 'Existing Records' section where you can see and edit any existing DNS records you may have on you Clara zone file. These will replicate out across the internet IF your domains NS records point to Clara's name servers (NS).

SRV records are a little more complicated to set up, so we will go into more detail here.

SRV (Service Records) relate to a particular service of the domain, like FTP or SIP, rather than a specific machine the way A or CNAME records do. A number of machines can be specified for a given service, with differing priority and "weight" assigned, so the administrator can specify both the order in which the machines are queried and the proportion of requests each server would handle.

An SRV record consists of the following:

• Service - This is the service the record is being set up to handle, such as sip or ftp.
• Protocol - This is the protocol the service is running on. Currently SRV records support the TCP and UDP protocols.

The above will be entered into the 'Hostname' field on the 'Add SRV Record' tab, an example of how this may look is:

_sipfederationtls._tcp

* Priority - Like in an MX record, priority determines in what order the servers are queried if there is more than one SRV record for a given service. The lowest number prioroty is looked to first, so a server with a priority of 5 would be checked before a priority of 10. The higher priority numbers are checked in cases where the first server is unavailable. This will be entered into the 'Priority' field on dnsdit.

* Weight - Weight is a load balancing mechanism which determines the proportion of traffic the machine pointed to will handle. If 2 SRV records exist for the same service at the same priority, traffic will be directed to them in proportion to the weight. A server with a weight of 20 will receive twice the traffic as one with 10, if there is no load balancing going on it is recommended to use a weight of 0.

* Port - Port is the port number the service is run through on the machine providing it. This may or may not be a standard port designated in Assigned Numbers.

* Target - This is the host name of the machine providing the service for the domain. This name must be defined as an A record for the SRV record to function.

The Weight, Port & Target entries go into the 'Content' field of the record your adding, an example of how this may look like is:

100 5061 wow-omg.borked.co.uk

A example of what the correct record should look like is:

Please be aware our telephone support team are unable to advise on the use and implementation of SRV records.