Alibaba Cloud DNS:Instance FAQ

Paid Edition provides higher quality and more comprehensive protection. The advantages include the following:

• Higher service quality: Paid Edition offer a 100% Service-Level Agreement (SLA) and technical support to ensure stability and rapid problem resolution. The Free Edition provides no availability guarantee or technical support.

• More features:

  • Greater resolution flexibility with support for more subdomain levels and more granular TTL settings.

  • Intelligent resolution that covers various ISPs, cloud vendors, and regional lines to ensure optimal access paths for users.

  • A higher number of supported IP addresses for load balancing to meet complex traffic demands.

  • Support for DNSSEC and request volume statistics to enhance security and data analytics.

• Advanced features (Enterprise and Ultimate Editions):

  • Finer-grained smart DNS resolution.

  • Additional support for DNS record backup and Secondary DNS to further improve availability and security.

For more information, see Instance selection guide.

A: If you have enabled traffic analysis for your domain name and want to reduce the cost, you can use one of the following methods:

• Method 1: Purchase a data transfer plan

• Method 2: Adjust the TTL value of the DNS records for the domain name. A larger TTL value means that DNS resolution results are cached for a longer period on a local DNS server. This reduces the number of resolution requests sent to the authoritative DNS server and lowers costs.

  Warning

  Before you perform, read How to configure TTL to understand the impact of TTL adjustments.

• Method 3: Apply for a business discount. If Method 1 and Method 2 do not resolve your issue, contact us on DingTalk for assistance. DingTalk ID: behladu.

1. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud DNS - Public Zone.

2. Click Auto-renewal.

3. In the filter section, set Expire At to All, Commodity Name to Alibaba Cloud DNS, and Region to All. On the Manual Renewal tab, select the instances for which you want to enable auto-renewal, and click Enable Auto-renewal.

   The payment for auto-renewal is processed based on the time shown in the Expiration Countdown column in the following figure.

A: The upgrade process is smooth. Your DNS records continue to resolve without interruption. The procedure varies based on your domain name registrar:

• Domain name registered with Alibaba Cloud: After the instance is upgraded, Alibaba Cloud DNS attempts to automatically update the DNS server names for your domain name. However, if the automatic update fails because an update lock is enabled for the domain name or because of network issues, you must first disable the update lock and then manually modify the DNS server addresses. For more information, see Modify the DNS servers for a domain name.

• Domain name not registered with Alibaba Cloud: You must go to your domain name registrar to change the DNS servers to the ones assigned by Alibaba Cloud DNS.

A: When you upgrade from Paid Edition to a higher one, if the DNS servers assigned by Alibaba Cloud DNS are different from the previous ones, this does not affect domain name resolution. This is because all Paid Editions of Alibaba Cloud DNS use the same cluster: vip(1-8).alidns.com. You can optionally go to your domain name registrar and change the DNS servers to the latest ones assigned by Alibaba Cloud DNS. This change does not affect DNS resolution availability. For specific instructions, see Modify the DNS servers for a domain name.

A: Paid Editions of Alibaba Cloud DNS do not support downgrades from a higher edition to a lower one. For example, you cannot downgrade from the Ultimate Edition to the Personal Edition.

• To use a lower-edition instance for your domain name, see Change the instance to which a domain name is attached.

• To switch your domain name from a Paid Edition to the Free Edition, see Detach a domain name from an instance.

A: Paid Editions of Alibaba Cloud DNS do not support downgrades from a higher edition to a lower one. Switching a domain name from a Paid Edition to the Free Edition is typically done by performing a detach operation, or it occurs automatically when the instance expires. A failure may occur for the following reasons:

• If your domain name is registered with and managed by Alibaba Cloud, the failure is usually because an update lock is enabled for the domain name. You can perform a WHOIS query to check the domain status. If the domain status is `clientUpdateProhibited` (Registrar-Lock), see Enable an update lock for a domain name to disable the lock. Then, see Modify the DNS servers for a domain name to change the DNS servers to the Free Edition DNS servers assigned by Alibaba Cloud DNS.

• Alibaba Cloud DNS does not support automatic DNS server switching for domain names that are not registered with Alibaba Cloud. If your domain name is registered with and managed by a third-party registrar, you must manually change the DNS servers to the Free Edition DNS servers assigned by Alibaba Cloud DNS through your registrar.

A: Yes. You must switch to the Free Edition no later than seven days after the instance expires. Otherwise, the instance is released and your DNS resolution is interrupted. In addition, due to feature differences between the Paid and Free editions, some DNS records may be suspended or some features may become unavailable. For solutions and detailed steps, see Instance expiration rule description.

A: Yes. You can request a refund for an instance that is in use or for a renewal period. Currently, only partial refunds are supported for Alibaba Cloud DNS instances. For more information, see Unsubscribe from an instance.

A: After a Paid Edition instance expires, its DNS data is retained for seven days. If you renew the instance within this period, DNS resolution is not affected. If a Paid Edition instance is not renewed within seven days after it expires, the instance is released. To prevent DNS resolution failures after the release, be aware of the following:

• Domain names registered with Alibaba Cloud: The domain name is automatically downgraded to the Alibaba Cloud DNS Free Edition cluster. DNS records that use paid features are suspended. During the downgrade, if an update lock is enabled for the domain name (a WHOIS query shows the domain status as `clientUpdateProhibited`) or a network timeout occurs, the automatic downgrade fails. This causes DNS service failures. In this case, you must manually go to the domain name console and change the DNS servers to the Free Edition servers. You can find the Free Edition DNS server names in the Alibaba Cloud DNS console.

• Domain names not registered with Alibaba Cloud: The DNS service is interrupted. You must change the DNS servers for the domain name to the Alibaba Cloud DNS Free Edition servers.

For more information, see Instance expiration rule description.