Does nameserver contain dns records?

Question

I have a VServer at Hosteurope with IP X.Y.Z. I have bought a domain and the first nameserver is set to my VServer X.Y.Z that I administrate with PLESK. I have setup the DNS records for the domain within PLESK.

Now, as the secondary nameserver I have the HE default secondary nameserver, like ns2.hosteurope.yxcyxc

I thought the default HE secondary nameserver would clone the DNS records of my primary server. But according to Hosteurope support secondary HE nameserver only maps to my VServer and if the server is down, nothing will happen.

I always thought a nameserver must have all DNS settings and the second nameserver would always clone the DNS settings of the primary nameserver. Is this actually not the case? Does a nameserver only contain the IP of the target server from the requested website? Or does it also contains the DNS records? If it contains the DNS records, does one need to set the DNS settings twice, once time for primary and one time for secondary nameserver?

Answer 1

I always thought a nameserver must have all DNS settings and the second nameserver would always clone the DNS settings of the primary nameserver. Is this actually not the case?

In a typical primary/secondary case, yes.

The primary has the zonefile with all records. This gets transmitted (in full or incrementally) to all secondaries (as configured on the primary) "as soon" as a change is detected in the content.

There are however other ways to setup a DNS constellation. The above setup is kind of the old one.

Or does it also contains the DNS records?

Every zone has NS records (and one SOA record) otherwise the zone can not resolve.

The primary/secondary distinction is only internal, and useful/seen by the entity managing those nameservers. For outside, all nameservers listed as authoritative on a given zone are exactly the same and should provide exactly the same reply for the same request.

If it contains the DNS records, does one need to set the DNS settings twice, once time for primary and one time for secondary nameserver?

No. Everything is in the zonefile, and the primary configuration lists where to send/from where to accept any zonefile content. But if nameservers change (which is different from changing any other trivial data in the zonefile) you have bigger things to do, as in configuring the new nameservers to work properly.

Answer 2

A "secondary" DNS server will only update itself with details from the primary server if the primary is configured to allow this as well as the secondary. This generally implies the primary and secondary are set up to work together, and there are security concerns (notably transferring the zone file - this is not a standard dns request). While the technology still exists its largely outdated and been replaced with multiple primary nameservers (often using replicated databases).

Webservers/single VMs /CPanel type setups (and I assume Plesk as well) are not a good choice because they represent a single machine - typically on a single network with lots of single points of failure. In these cases you are better off using your domain registrar nameservers.

There are at least 2 types of nameservers - when hosting a domain name you are interested in an "authoritative" server. This server contains all the records associated with the domain, unless you use NS records to delegate subdomains elsewhere.