DNS / Static IP Address Question

#1

I have a client who is going to be migrating their hosting to DreamHost. I’ve set up their hosting account with DreamHost, and we are working on finalizing the change of where their domain points. We’re running into a situation where they would like to keep their email run on their own internal servers, so they don’t want to change their DNS records to point to DreamHost’s name servers. What they would instead like to do is keep their own name servers, but point their domain to an IP address at DreamHost.

I’ve looked into unique IP addresses through DreamHost, and I see that they’re available, but not static. The problem that I’m foreseeing is that if the IP on their hosting changes, they’ll need to go into their name servers and update with the new IP for their site to come back online.

Can you offer any suggestions for how we can proceed? We need some way to have a static IP address, unless there’s another idea that you can offer.

#2

You have correctly analyzed the situation regarding the difference between a static IP address and a Unique IP address. The Unique IP is subject to change, and you will need to change it in the client’s nameserver records if they maintain the domains records there. This can be a pain, indeed.

Unfortunately, DreamHost does not, at this time, offer Static IP addresses.

Given your description of the client’s concerns, one workaround for this is to just use DreamHost’s namesevers with custom MX records for email set to the client’s static IP address. As those records are static, this seems the way to most easily and conveniently deal with this if you want to host the website here, but the email on their IP address.