Manual DNS

There may be times you need to change your server's DNS settings, either because you find they're misconfigured or because you want to use your own. Fortunately there isn't a lot of work involved in changing the DNS servers, just a quick edit in the right place. 

Network Settings

Your server's DNS settings are bound to the public network interface, the one that talks to the rest of the world. We'll edit that interface's properties to make our change.

Go to the Control Panel, then open "Network and Sharing Center". Once there select "Manage network connections" from the left side of the window.

In the list of network connections right-click the "public" interface and select "Properties". Alternately you can double-click the "public" interface and find the Properties button in the status window that comes up.

In the new window select "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and click its "Properties" button.

The DNS servers are set in the bottom half of the dialog box you should see now. The settings you enter will depend on the location of your Cloud Servers.

Rackspace Cloud UK

If you're on Rackspace Cloud UK you can use our closest DNS servers by setting the DNS server entries to the following:

83.138.151.80
83.138.151.81

Rackspace Cloud USA

If your Cloud Server is in the US you should use:

173.203.4.8
173.203.4.9

Once you have your DNS servers set click OK. And you're done. No reboot required.

A quick test

The easiest way to make sure your new settings are good ones is to try to ping a domain name:

ping -n 3 rackspace.com

You should see a result like:

Pinging rackspace.com [173.203.44.122] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 173.203.44.122: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=252
Reply from 173.203.44.122: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=252
Reply from 173.203.44.122: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=252
 
Ping statistics for 173.203.44.122:
    Packets: Sent = 3, Received = 3, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

If you get a "could not find host" message back you should double-check the IP addresses you set as your DNS servers.

Summary

It's that simple - change or add those name servers and once the settings are saved the system will use them right away. Make sure the changes take with a quick ping to test it and you'll be done.