Transferring DNS is always a hassle. You want to make sure you copy all the records correctly to avoid any downtime when changing nameservers. But, are all hosts public? We’ll find out below.
Cloudflare automatically imports records
Most of you have seen how Cloudflare imports DNS records. The interesting thing is, they don’t really request all existing records; they basically try the most common records and see if there’s any matches. If there is one, it’ll be copied.
Using dig and ANY
Well, how about the ANY command then? You’d expect that any server gives you all the records when you query with ‘ANY’. I’ve tried this with a bunch of domains, but definitely not all records are returned. In other words: Don’t use this for a safe transfer.
dig +nocmd yourdomain.com any +multiline +noall +answer
Using AXFR (Zone transfers)
Now, this tool is made exactly for this! But.. Most DNS servers are not configured to answer on this request. If you’re in control of the DNS server, you can permit yourself (your server IP) to allow reading the full zone. But let’s be honest: If you’re in control of the DNS server, you might as well just copy/paste your ZONE files to the new one.
So, what do you do for a safe DNS transfer?
It’s manual work, and as easy as below;
- Login to your DNS control panel and get the list of DNS records
- Login to your new domain hosts’ DNS control panel
- Copy/paste the DNS records and make sure to make no mistakes.
Sorry, can’t make it any easier for you 🙁
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