Because the issues involved with DNS administration are complex and numerous, don’t set up DNS service on your network unless you’re an experienced DNS administrator.
A good source of information about DNS is DNS and BIND, 5th edition, by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu (O’Reilly and Associates, 2006).
Note: Apple can help you locate a network consultant to implement DNS service. You can contact Apple Professional Services and Apple Consultants Network at consultants.apple.com.
Consider creating a mail alias, such as “hostmaster,” that receives mail and delivers it to the person that runs the DNS server at your site. This permits users and other DNS administrators to contact you regarding DNS problems.
Set up at least one primary and one secondary name server. That way, if the primary name server shuts down, the secondary name server can continue to provide service. A secondary server gets its information from the primary server by periodically copying all domain information from the primary server.
After a name server is provided with the name/address pair of a host in another domain (outside the domain it serves), the information is cached, ensuring that IP addresses for recently resolved names are stored for later use.
DNS information is usually cached on your name server for a set time, referred to as a time-to-live (TTL) value. When the TTL value for a domain name/IP address pair expires, the entry is deleted from the name server’s cache and your server requests the information as needed.