NOTE: This article is written for our Classic Cloud Control Panel. You can access this interface from the New Cloud Control Panel by clicking your username in the upper-right of the control panel and selecting "Classic Control Panel".

This article provides a quick set of step-by-step instructions for managing your DNS records via the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel

• Log into the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel
• Navigate to Hosting->Cloud Sites

• Click on any Domain Name (The Domain tab is accessible from the Domain Details screen of any of your websites. All DNS entries are visible and editable from the Domain tab).
• Click on the Domain Tab

The Domain Tab contains 4 sections:

1. Website Domain Information
2. DNS Management
3. MX (Mail Exchanger) Management
4. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) Records

Let's take a closer look at each of these sections and review their contents. 

Website Domain Information

This section will allow you to manage your domains nameserver settings, register an unregistered domain (if applicable) and transfer your domain (if applicable).

DNS Management

This section will show you all of your DNS records, add new records, modify existing records and delete records. 

Add New Record

• To add a new record, choose Add A Record

• Fill in the Domain Record and Content with the desired values 

Modify Existing Record

• Scroll down to the DNS Management portion of the Domain Tab

• This area will provide you with all of the DNS entries for your currently-viewed domain within Cloud Sites 

  

• Click on the domain name next to the record Type you would like to modify

• Enter in the new Value for the DNS entry

This value could be entered as an IP address for an A record change, or a FQDN for a CNAME record change. 

• Click Save to update the change in the DNS entry

MX (Mail Exchanger) Management

The Rackspace Cloud's network currently has two mail exchangers (MX hosts) to provide you with a highly available mail solution. If you choose to run your own DNS servers or host your DNS elsewhere, our current MX record setup is as follows: (bind format)

• yourdomain.com. 3600 IN MX 10 mx1.emailsrvr.com.
• yourdomain.com. 3600 IN MX 20 mx2.emailsrvr.com.

Please check back often as we will add more MX hosts as our system continues to grow.

For the best Rackspace Cloud mail experience we recommend keeping your MX hosts up to date. Of course, if you host your DNS with The Rackspace Cloud, you will not need to make any changes and all of the MX hosts will be updated automatically.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) Records

A SPF record is a DNS TXT record and is added to our DNS zone in the same manner that A records and MX records are added.

The SPF record (remember the record is associated with the domain) specifies which mail server(s) the domain uses to send mail.

It does require the server receiving your mail to check the SPF record to ensure it complies with the domain records but the majority of public mail servers (such as your ISPs mail servers, google mail and so on) will do so.

Having said that, we do not guarantee every ISP complies with the SPF policy or, even if they do, that they do so correctly.

If the receiving server complies with the SPF policy correctly, and the sent email does not conform to your domain records (i.e. comes from an unknown server), it will be marked as fake and either deleted or marked as spam.

One thing to note is that the SPF record allows mail to be quickly assessed by compliant recipients as the checks are completed from information in the header of the email. That is, before the body of the message is loaded. This saves a great deal of time and resources if the mail is a forgery.

In this section, you will be presented with two options:

1. Use The Rackspace Cloud's default SPF records
2. Do not use The Rackspace Cloud's default SPF records

Our suggestion would be, if you are not familiar with SPF records and are not comfortable configuring your own, then opt to use The Rackspace Cloud's default SPF records.

If you would like to use your own SPF record you can add it to your domain in a record of type "TXT" in the DNS Management section.