Overview

BIND is by far the most widely used DNS software on the Internet and is fully compliant with published DNS standards. named is the daemon that runs BIND. Together, these services allow you to run private nameservers.

However, named uses a considerable amount of resources. named is disabled by default, but becomes activated after you add your first domain in Plesk. After that, once you turn it off, it should stay off. By default, named has been disabled on (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server 3.5 since most sites do not use this service. By disabling this service, over 50 MB of RAM are available for your server. If you have a need to use named on your server, this article will explain how to enable it. We recommend to disable the service, if not in use.

Requirements

This article has the following dependencies:

Root access and Developer Tools must to be installed in order to complete this article. If you currently do not have your root user enabled or our Developer Tools installed, please visit the Root Access & Developer Tools section of your AccountCenter. Additional information is available:

• Plesk administrator access - If needed, you can reset your Plesk admin password. Please see: How can I change my Plesk admin password?
• Install the Developer Tools
• Enable root access

Instructions

1. Log into the Plesk Server Administration Panel. See Figure 1:

   
   Figure 1: Server Administration Panel

2. Click on Tools & Utilities on the left. See Figure 2:

   
   Figure 2. Click on Tools & Utilities.

3. Scroll down to the Server Management section, then click on Services Management. See Figure 3:

   
   Figure 3. Click on Services Management.

4. Finally, click on the red button to right of DNS Server (BIND). See Figure 4:

   
   Figure 4. Click on the red button to stop the service.

5. After a few seconds, the button next to the service name will switch from green to red. The service is now off, see Figure 5. You should notice that your memory use will begin to significantly decrease.

   
   Figure 5.

(mt) Media Temple has a tool that will allow you to easily optimize your (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server. MIB (Make It Better) contains preset configurations hosted on our internal repository. These presets allow you to easily tune or change settings to your server using values that have been thoroughly tested by our engineers.

MIB is run from the command line via SSH. Although this utility is much simpler than applying these optimizations or changes manually, it is still recommended to have a basic understanding of SSH and Linux system administration. (See links below for more information.)

1. To enable named, run the following command after connecting to your server via SSH as root:

   /usr/local/mt/bin/mib --enablenamed --apply

2. To disable named on your server, you can run the following command:

   /usr/local/mt/bin/mib --disablenamed --apply

Resources

• Configure bind (named) to start on reboot/restart