Help with DNS settings

[hoover40]

My dad recently bought a mac mini server for his office and entrusted me to set it up for him. I bought the snow leopard server for dummies book and have read up on everything but one area that is still confusing is DNS. When doing the initial configuration and setup, I come to the Network Names screen. Now the book gives three different options for this screen:

A. If you have a DNS server on your network, the info will already be filled in.

B. If you don't have a DNS server, and you don't get DNS service from an ISP, your mac will be the DNS server. Register a domain name and enter a fully qualified DNS name similar to this: myserver.acme.com.

C. If you don't have a DNS server, and only the local network access the server, then you can make up a name.

So I have a few questions.

1. We want to be able to access the files on the server from home, so I'm assuming we should
choose option B so the server will be available on the internet. However, I also assume that we currently get DNS service from our ISP, so if we choose option B, will the mac mini server become our DNS server instead of the ISP's DNS servers?

2. We have a website at alpinemaintenance.com. I assume this will work for the registered domain name needed in option 2. So do I enter something similar to myserver.alpinemaintenance.com?

3. My dad does not want to use this server to host our website or email services right now. By using that registered domain name for this server, will it automatically make our mac mini server the web and email server? I'm assuming not since records would have to be changed.

I'm pretty experienced with macs in general but new to Mac OS X Server, and I'll probably have more questions once these get answered.
Thanks for your patience.

 

[Alrescha]

OS X Server needs to know its name and its IP address. It needs to get this information from a DNS server. If there is no DNS server that knows OS X Server's name and IP address, OS X Server will be its own DNS Server.

All of this is internal to OS X Server. It has no effect on anything else (until you purposefully start using OS X Server services).

Answers:

1. OS X Server won't become your DNS server unless you choose to do so.

2. Picking a reasonable name now might save you from having to rename.

3. No.


There are *other* considerations (for instance, users on the machine will be known as user@domain-you-choose), but OS X Server isn't magically going to take over anything by itself. If you tell it to be a DHCP server, it will be one. If you point machines at it for DNS, it will answer. It is under your control.

A.