I should clarify I wasn’t a upper level sys admin managing those servers, I just used them or maintained accounts being a rank and file technician
While I get the fundamental concept of DNS as a phonebook for your IPs. I am not sure why it is joked around if something goes haywire or someone breaks something.
Is it because if you get no DNS, people can’t log in through their AD accounts, browse the Internet?
Afaik DNS is a bit of a rabbit hole topic, maybe that’s why people joke about it due to DNS being this “No one really knows how this magic name matching box works”?
Please correct me, I’d genuinely like to know why this is prevalent from you guys.
Because so few understand it and so many things use it.
If you read a guide on setting up a website. They might have you change a DNS record and you might not realize it’s doing something else. Web developers frequently want to make changes to DNS and will change the name servers away to theirs but not migrate any of the records for anything besides the website. They’ll break EVERYTHING but hey, the website will load.
If you read a guide on connecting some service like hubspot. They will have you add spf records. But those need to be included with the existing ones and not just replacing what’s already there. Mess it up and every single email you send will get sent to spam folders.
clueless dev who very rarely touches web apps here, what things would break if you dont touch other records besides those for tour website?
A records are usually fine for web dev, and some cname records. But if you move DNS to different name servers it doesn’t take the MX, srv, or txt with you.
Name servers are where all the DNS records are hosted. It tells every computer who is the authority on the information. If you change those without moving all the DNS records to the new location. All the old ones are no longer used at all. Even if they still exist on the old system.
Also spf records might also reference the websites a record to allow the website to send email without getting flagged as spam. If the site moves, but emails are still sent from the old IP address for a myriad of reasons it would break email. Like if they used some provider that hosted the site and emails on the same system, which used to be more common than it is today.