Go live

Going live involves several stages.

• Stage 0. Provision your zones using Edge DNS on ​Akamai Control Center​. This allows your zone information to be transferred to ​Akamai​. For secondary zones, verify that Edge DNS is updating your zones successfully.
• Stage 1. Delegate your zones to a subset of your original servers and some ​Akamai​ servers. To retrieve the list of ​Akamai​ name servers, do the following:
  1. From the Edge DNS zone list page, click a zone to view zone details.
  2. Expand the zone settings.
  3. View the list of authoritative name servers.
• Stage 2. Delegate your zones to all six ​Akamai​ servers, and, if desired, to some or all of your original servers. If you use multiple DNS providers, include at least one name server whose subdomain begins with an even number (for example, a2, a4, a6) and one whose subdomain begins with an odd number (for example, a1, a3, a5).

To safely complete Stages 1 and 2, complete the next tasks.

1. Update the relevant name server (NS) records in your zone file. As just mentioned, for Stage 1, the NS records should consist of your original servers and some ​Akamai​ servers.

   For Stage 2, the records should consist of all six ​Akamai​ servers and zero or more of your original servers. If you use multiple DNS providers, include at least one name server whose subdomain begins with an even number (for example, a2, a4, a6) and one whose subdomain begins with an odd number (for example, a1, a3, a5).

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   Allow zone updates to propagate

   Allow these zone updates to propagate to the new and the original servers. Your original servers will continue to receive traffic, and because they'll likely supply authority information when providing answers, they might refresh authority information in client name server caches. Therefore, unless you allow your original servers to provide the new authorities the information, those client name servers might never learn about the new authorities.

   It's important to understand that once your original servers start serving the new NS records, some traffic reaches ​Akamai​ servers.

2. Ensure that the NS records have propagated to ​Akamai​ name servers. You can view the oldest start of authority (SOA) serial number for your zone on the name servers using ​Control Center​. See View zone transfer status.

3. Provide your registrar with the names of the ​Akamai​ name servers that you included in your zone file. Zone changes with the registrar generally take about five minutes to propagate to the top-level domain name servers. At this point, end users routinely start making requests to the ​Akamai​ name servers.