Switching Web Server & All Servers To Mac OS X Server

[ylon]

I’d like to run down a scenario that I have in the works at the moment and get your feedback or directions as to which way I should take my current needs.

I currently have a FreeBSD server on which I host all of my web services for multiple customers and the hosting company has been quite flakey. After much toil and suffering with this company, I’ve decided to move on. I’m actually going to opt towards Mac OS X Server to meet my future needs as I’m tiring of worrying about a support system for FreeBSD and would like a more integrated admin interface with feedback vs. what Webmin and other control panels offer. It also seems that Mac network admins are part of a more closely knit community than what I’ve experienced on FBSD.

Please note, near the end of this thread I have DNS questions which I’m hoping you’ll be able to clarify as well.

At any rate, here is my plan, please add too or detail out any portions that you might see a hangup or other issue in:

I am acquiring an Xserve which I will place at a new colo hosting facility which will be the Production Server. This will host quite a few web sites that will run PHP as well as WebObjects web apps. This will of course be running on a static IP and have several to spare for SSL.

Back at my office, I will have a Firewall and behind it a PowerMac acting as a Development Server. I’m going to be running Mac OS X Server on it as well and it will server a few functions: Mirror the production server for rsync backup (I wish I could do redundancy, but the local ISP does not allow port 80 nor SMTP services out) and a development server so that I can tell a client to go to "dev.somedomain.com:12345" in order to see a sample of updates or a new site before deployment. The funky port is just because I cannot use 80 for the previews. dev.alldomains.com point as a cname alias to my_development_dynamic.dyndns.org so that all domains under my control simply redirect dev.* to my dynamic-ip office network.

The real questions come into my domain management since I’m running on a dynamic IP (nearly static) back at my office. I have one domain: production_domain.com and then my dynamic ip domain: dynamic_development_domain.com. What is the best way to set up DNS and the structure for this? And does this above setup look to be the appropriate way of doing things? At the moment my other "no good" hosting company is managing DNS for me and I just tell them to create the bind entries, but now I’m going to be handling all myself it appears.

FYI, the Firewall/VPN I use at the head of my office for the dynamic ip/dyndns resolution is a Netgear FVS328 that automatically goes out and negotiates my DynDNS account and so forth for me so that I do not have to fiddle with that kind of stuff on the Development Mac OS X Server on the office end.

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