For members who want an advance preview into the new system, what follows are step-by-step instructions on how to move a domain from the current easyDNS interface to the new management platform.
The new platform has been live since mid-2009, many of the staff here have been running their personal domains off of here and we’ve had numerous beta users on board as well. Additionally, I’ve been running one of my personal email accounts through the new easyMAIL platform since last summer, and I felt confident enough to switch my mom’s email to it a few weeks ago.
There are few things we are still smoothing out and filling in like some of the help docs and some of the new features.
But here it is, the shape of things to come for easyDNS.
If you have a number of domains, we recommend you try it on one first so you can see the new interface and get used to it. There’s no risk involved in switching over.
There is also this introductory document which outlines the new features and what changes on the new platform. It is strongly recommended that you review that document first.
So without further adieu, here’s how to move a domain to the new system….
Please take note
For the sake of caution, please start with one domain, preferably one that is non-critical to your operations, and carefully inspect your DNS, URL forwarding and mail forwarding settings on the new system before activation.
Step 1
On the current member interface, look for the “port” link in your utilities module (if you do not have a “utilities” module visible, click on the “personalize” link in the left hand side menu.
Click on the “port” link and you’ll get a list of domains that are eligible to be ported to the new system. A domain will not appear in this list if:
- It has an outstanding invoice – this is to avoid conflicts in the billing cycle
- It’s already expired
Step 2
Pick the domain(s) you want to port and click “next”.
If you get an error, contact support and include the error message.
Once the domain settings have been ported, they will not become active until you activate the domain on the new system side.
Once you click on “next” you’ll see a list of domains under your account, when you click on the “manage” link for a domain, it brings you to the Domain Overview module.
Step 3
After you’ve reviewed your DNS settings and any mailmaps, you can “activate” the domain on the new system. There will be a one-time delay as the nameserver cluster updates to load from the new system. (As an aside, you may be happy to note that new domains added directly to the new system via registration or transfer will be activated on the nameserver cluster instantly, which is handy).
You will also see some other interesting items under the Domain Overview module, such as
- IPv6 AAAA type records
- a “renew” link for renewing a domain at any time (no more opening a ticket with support when you want to renew early)
- the “import” link lets you upload a bind style zonefile into your DNS settings
- a “portfolio” setting, which lets you sort your domains into logical groupings called “portfolios” (and optionally share portfolios by giving specific access rights to other users on the system)
And for DNS Pro (formerly DNS Plus) domains:
- host monitoring and failover DNS is out of beta
- easyMAIL – IMAP hosting
That’s probably enough to digest for now. We’ll be posting more info about new features and services over the next few weeks.
I have to admit, I’m disappointed with the new interface. Sure, users always hate change, but as a developer, and a happy easyDNS customer, I personally expected something user friendly, intuitive and visually appealing.
Had problems porting some domains too. It also seems like updates on the old system take longer to sync now?
Other folks who I’ve recommended easyDNS to are struggling with the new interface as well.
Hi Don, feel free to let us know what doesn’t work for you on the new interface. One of the advantages of rolling this out is that we can actually make changes fairly quickly, and even push more
functionality back to the user level (like make a particular aspect subject to a user preference).
The new system and the old system push their data to the same array of nameservers, there is nothing in the new system that would slow down the old one, if the legacy interface is slow to sync, then it’s some other issue. Can you open a support ticket with the details around that if you haven’t already so we can take a look?
thx.
You can also email your thoughts on the interface directly, my email is markjr [at] you_know_what . com
Thanks for the reply Mark, I’ll drop you a line.
The porting problems were strange, eventually switched back to the old interface. Will give it a try again soon.
The way things should have worked:
On a simpler way, i.e., domains should have been migrated automatically to the new interface.
This was debated for a long time internally over the years (yes, years) leading up to this. As a company that deals primarily in providing continuity of infrastructure – mass cutovers like that are potential disasters. Combine that with the fact that most people don’t like forced, flash cuts we decided the best way to do this was incrementally and in the most non-disruptive way possible.
mass cutovers are something Rogers does and it creates headaches for users and admins (does anyone know anymore how/where to login to their “rogers online account”?). So *thank you* for using a sane and simple approach and continuing to put into practice the solid network engineering principles which drew me to easyDNS in the first place.
I use the old interface a bit because it seems the new web UI has more javascript buglets with the strange old browsers I use and there are still a few broken links (search seems sporadic, a few missing help pages). Thanks for pushing out the new pages and leaving the old sold system in place so you and we can work out the bugs over the next few months.
You’ve fixed DNS for me for years and now you are starting to fix SMTP too so one thing I’d like a bit more information on is easySMTP. Why does the enable mailout option even appear in non DNS+Plus accounts. Is it included in DNS+Pro? Is there a charge if we turn it on? Can we pay to have our quota raised from 250 mails a day? Can we forward suggestions or “user documentation” for easySMTP (a wiki would be nice)? I am trying to build out postfix servers that use DKIM/SPF/SASL/SMTP-AUTH and whatever other features I can put together (pgp signing/openssl encryption) to make e-mail an enterprise grade service like it was in the 1990s 😉
I’d like to help easyDNS help me to do that.
Thanks a lot and cheers,
ps: ipv6!! thanks!
pps: I’m pretty good with mediawiki if you want help with that.
I think the most surprising part about this procedure is that migration is necessary at all. This is an interface change right? Why not support the old and new interface to the same back end an avoid “migration”. Since some people are having trouble, I feel like staying away until it works.
Hi Dennis, in one way we did as you suggest, since both the new system and the old system push their data to the same nameserver cluster on the backend. Just that the new system adds a third DNS anycast strand for the enterprise-level domains.
But interface change is perhaps a slight misnomer when you consider that it’s also a complete rewrite of the database backend as well. For that reason the migration is necessary to move between the two systems, but we opted not to force move everybody (which people hate) and also not to put a time limit or other impetus to move. In other words, feel free to stay on the old interface for as long as you want and as long as you feel comfortable.
People will notice that new features will be coming out, they will happen on the new interface, not the old. Some won’t care. There are a lot of people who came on board over 10 years ago, logged in last back in 2001 to setup a dynamic DNS client, and have never logged in since, and probably won’t for another 20 years.
But for those who find the old system clunky, or have been waiting for things that the new system can do, they’ll find the migration worth it.
(We actually imported the easydns.com zone into it yesterday! – we realized we weren’t using the third anycast strand on dns3.easydns.org, which is 10 cities worldwide, on our own root domain 🙂
Hey… just exactly how long do yall’ intend to leave the ‘old’ interface in place. I really like not having to learn a new system.. however I know it’s inevitable. It’d be nice to have a working system, such as the old system here, be retained for many many many years. It is easy for me to know what to do without thinking much, and I like that.
Changing the UI for reasons other than the customers needs seems like a not-so-good approach. I am just one customer… and I understand yall serve many! (good for yall:) .. so I will follow where the group takes me as yall have a good service. However, if the interface change is to suite some internal developers vision, over the customers vision (and my vision is to not have to re-learn yet another UI), then I’d say it’s a bit misguided. I’d follow suite though if there’s no other choice. Thanks for not forcing that one me 🙂 ..
Yet another satisfied customer!
Smiles,
Karl
You can basically count on it being there for a long time. What will happen going forward is that new features will be introduced on the new system. If an external system changes forcing us to recode things, we will stop supporting it on the old system (example: the new .CA registry just changed the backend, so we only supported that on the new system ).
Additional nameservers, upgraded infrastructure, etc etc – all happens on the new system. At some point we will commence a sunset process for the old system, but in the words of Homer Simpson “but that won’t happen for a really long time….”
Will the new system and backend impact the APIs some of us use to update DNS via tools like ez-ipupdate?
Thanks for years of great service!
Dave
For now we have a system in place which will proxy dynamic DNS requests received on the old system over to the new one for domains which have moved over.
Eventually we’d like to be able to turn this off, but that’ll happen after a push to get all the various dynamic DNS clients out there to add support for direct updates to the new system
thx!