| SYSTEM INFORMATION | |
|---|---|
| OS type and version: | Ubuntu Linux 20.04.3 LTS |
| Webmin version: | 1.984 |
| Virtualmin version: | 6.17 Pro-3 |
| Related products version: | None |
Howdy! I previously brought this up as part of an issue filed last year in the (now archived) issue tracker but as some time has passed, I wanted to bring it up again as its own topic.
Are there plans by the Virtualmin development team to add support for reusable delegation sets in Amazon Route 53? To quote AWS, a reusable delegation set is “a set of four authoritative name servers that you can use with more than one hosted zone.”
By default, Route 53 assigns a random selection of name servers to each new hosted zone. Thus, when a new virtual server is created in Virtualmin and an associated hosted zone is created in the attached AWS Route 53 account, a random set of four name servers are assigned to that zone and must be set at the domain’s registrar in order for DNS to work properly, but Virtualmin neither displays these random name servers or knows anything about them to begin with, so one must go into the AWS Console to gather this information. This also conflicts with Virtualmin’s server template settings for defining the master name server of a DNS zone, because according to AWS a random set of name servers are assigned for each hosted zone, but a server template in Virtualmin is designed to apply the same settings to multiple DNS zones.
In light of this, I believe adding support for reusable delegation sets would go a long way towards mitigating these issues. For example, an option in the Virtualmin user interface (and preferably also in the modify-dns command line utility) could be added to let the admin choose an existing reusable delegation set when creating a new virtual server, thus allowing the new domain to use the same set of name servers as other virtual servers on the system that are also associated with the chosen delegation set. Going further, a feature could be added that allows users to create their own reusable delegation sets since this functionality is not currently available in the AWS Console (and most users would not know how to use the AWS API or CLI to create these sets).
One specific use case for all of this would be for a Web development firm that builds Websites for many different businesses, all hosted on Virtualmin. To simplify configuration, the system administrator could create a reusable delegation set in Amazon Route 53 and assign the given Ip addresses to a set of four “vanity” name servers at the firm’s primary domain name, such as ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com, and so on. Then, for each new virtual server created for a client’s Website, that delegation set could be associated at creation time and thus all of the firm’s client domain names would use the same set of vanity name servers. In this way, the system administrator would not have to manage a random set of name servers assigned by AWS for each client domain, and keep track of those at the domain’s registrar.
I am very pleased with the existing integration Virtualmin has for Amazon Route 53, but if I am honest I believe that a lack of support for such a fundamental AWS feature as reusable delegation sets greatly hinders the usefulness of such an integration.
I welcome any thoughts and comments regarding this subject.