Setting up Amazon EC2 is quick and easy, you can build a server within less than an hour.
I initially used a great guide posted by Rob Scott which shows how to setup a VPC with security group, an EC2 instance and then how to install WHM on it. I used the guide as reference to my own way of doing it though and it gave me the foundation I needed, especially being unfamiliar with AWS.
The guide tells you how to use Route53 for the DNS which I didn’t follow. I wanted to setup my own, private nameservers. The main reasons were aesthetic (the looks of it in WHOIS) and also so that I could point all my domains to the same two nameservers and never have to change them. If an IP ever had to be swapped out, I could just change the IP at the registrar but the nameservers would remain the same.
I assume that you’ve followed the guide to the point where you have a running Amazon EC2 instance, one network interface with one private IP and an elastic IP associated to that which is public and that you have then installed WHM. If you haven’t started the WHM install yet, that is okay, you can do the IP configuration during the installation of WHM.
So follow these steps to setup private nameservers on Amazon EC2 running WHM:
1. Manage private and elastic IPs
In the guide as mentioned above, Rob showed you how to create one, primary IP address which is private. He then also showed you to create an elastic IP and associate it with that private IP address you created. We want to create another private and public/elastic IP. One for each nameserver.
Now go to your AWS console and go to EC2. Then click “Instances” where you’ll see all your instances. Select the specific instance and click “Actions” at the top or right-click on the instance name. Then select “Manage Private IP Addresses“. Click “Assign New IP” and leave the box on “Auto Assign” and make sure you tick/check the “Allow reassociation” checkbox and then update. It created 10.0.0.172 for me.
Now go to Network & Security > Elastic IPs in your EC2 dashboard. Click the “Allocate New Address” button at the top to create an IP address. Once it has been created, select the elastic IP and click “Associate Address” at the top or right-click on it and select “Associate Address“. A dialog will appear.
Leave the instance empty and under network interface, click inside the field to load the network interfaces. Now choose the same network interface that you created the primary, private IP address on. Then under “Private IP Address“, select the private IP that we just created in the previous step and then tick/check the “Reassociation” checkbox and click “Associate” to finish.
That’s it for this step. You now have two private IPs on the network interface of the instance and you have two public, elastic IPs, each associated to one of the private IP addresses.
2. WHM IP Address Setup
If you haven’t installed WHM yet, you can do that now and it will allow you to add IP addresses during the setup process after installation.
If you have already installed WHM, you can go to IP Functions > Add New IP Address in WHM.
For both, remember that by default, it will be in NAT mode so you’ll enter the private IP addresses into WHM and not the elastic IPs. WHM will automatically route the private IP addresses to their associated elastic IPs for you, don’t worry about that.
In this case, the private IP that we just created was 10.0.0.172. So I’ll enter that into the box and submit it. Do the same for your other private IP address that you created on the instance earlier on in Rob’s guide accordingly. Again, do not enter the elastic IP, it will not work, it will just be unroutable unless you are not in NAT mode.
That’s it for the WHM setup. WHM will automatically route the private IP addresses to the elastic IPs and do the work for you.
3. Register Nameservers at Registrar
Now we need to register the private nameservers for our IP addresses at the registrar where the domain is registered or you could use a 3rd party DNS service if you wanted to but in this case I wanted the nameservers to be ns1.domain.com and ns2.domain.com where domain.com is my domain.
If you don’t have a domain that you want to use for the nameservers, you can just go and register one right now.
Login to your account at your registar like GoDaddy or Dynadot for example. Each registrar will give you documentation or help on registering private nameservers/hostnames so I’m not going to post different registrars here but I’ll give you the instructions for GoDaddy and Dynadot. Both are equally easy to do but GoDaddy seems very slow to propagate DNS compared to Dynadot from my experience. That is also why I have moved most of my domains over.
GoDaddy
Once you are logged into your GoDaddy account, click the “Launch” button next to “Domains“. Then you’ll be shown a list of domains where you’ll click the name of the domain that you’ll be using for the private nameservers.
On the domain details page, scroll down inside the “Settings” tab until you see “Host Names“. Then click “Manage” link which will open a dialog where you will click “Add Hostname“. Fill in the name of the nameservers that you want, eg. ns1.domain.com and then the one elastic IP that you associated to the instance through the network device earlier on. Then do the same for the second nameserver eg. ns2.domain.com and the other elastic IP you associated to the other private IP address.
Dynadot
Go to Domains, then you’ll see a list of all your domains.
For the specific domain that you want to use for the two nameservers, click on the link in the “Name Server” column of the table. It will take you to a page where you will see several choices such as name servers, parking, forwarding, etc. Select the “Name Servers” tab and directly under that click the “manage name servers” link. Then on the next page just click the “Register a domain name server” link.
So you will be presented with a form. First fill in the nameserver you wish to have eg. ns1.domain.com and then in the next field, fill in your one elastic IP address that you previously associated with your instance through the network interface. Then submit and do the same thing a second time using another nameserver eg. ns2.domain.com and the other elastic IP you associated to the other private IP address on the instance.
4. Test Nameservers
WHM will automatically update itself with your new nameservers after several hours as the DNS has propagated. You can go to DNS Functions > NS Record Report in WHM to see the nameservers and their public IP addresses. If they do not appear immediately, do not be alarmed, they will show up if you followed the steps correctly. It needs to propagate.
Now you can go to your registrar and point a domain to your two nameservers and wait for it to propagate. In Dynadot for example, since you have registered two private nameservers, they will automatically appear in the drop down menu showing the list of available nameservers to choose from.
Enjoy and good luck and feel free to comment here if you have any questions.
July 21, 2014 at 4:33 am
This post and the one referenced by Rob Scott are very helpful to someone like me; running a VPS at GoDaddy and having a tough time paying through the nose every time I need another 20 or 30 GB of space and getting “virtually” no support (sorry for that.) I mean, if I’m not going to get any (or much) help and I’m going to have to figure it all out myself anyway, I may as well go to Amazon and have the added benefit of truly flexible space and bandwidth. The only roadblock to making the plunge (for me) was just not having a clue how to navigate the conundrum that is the AWS interface.
Thanks for posting this…I can’t thank you enough.
July 21, 2014 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for your comment and I’m glad to hear the guide proved to be useful.
You are right about what you say. Just keep in mind that AWS is not managed so you won’t receive any support in regards to security or when something goes wrong. You will be pretty much on your own all the way.
When you do setup Amazon EC2 and WHM, I highly recommend that you take the necessary security steps like installing ClamAV to run on a cron to scan the server for viruses or malicious scripts, etc. Another thing you can look at is Atomic Secured Linux.
All the best and feel free to ask if you have any questions.
July 22, 2014 at 2:31 pm
Yes, I’m aware of the pitfalls, especially for someone still learning the ropes. I plan to put only non-essential sites (basically a couple of my own sites) on AWS at first – and I might keep it this way for a while! And certainly not without all the protections I currently have in place on my VPS at GoDaddy.
Thanks for the offer to answer questions, too. I might have to take you up on that.
July 26, 2014 at 12:08 am
Hello,
Thank you very much for this tutorial, Add Hostname entry in the private ip?.
Best regards,
Eugenio Carrió
July 28, 2014 at 9:39 am
My pleasure, I’m glad to hear it was useful.
What are you asking about the hostname in the private IP?
July 26, 2014 at 3:24 pm
How much do you charge to set up the CloudLinux with cPanel on aws ec2?
I’m trying, but I can not.
July 28, 2014 at 9:38 am
@Tiago
I’ve sent you an email asking if you still need help with this then I can give you a quote to assist with it.
July 28, 2014 at 6:45 am
Nice tutorial Antonie,
I was able to set up WHM on CLoud Linux AWS
I followed this instruction
I Created my custom name servers at Godaddy and mapped it to my elastic ip adress on amazon ec2
ns1.havilahandhills.net maps to 54.187.126.89
ns2.havilahandhills.net maps to 54.186.68.194
During initial WHM setup i added my custom name server and i used the server ip as an A record.
I created an account for a client havilahandhill.net / havilahandhills.net and http://gasstocksltd.com/ successfully but i cant access the websites.
I also get an error from http://www.intodns.com/havilahandhill.net%5DintoDNS: havilahandhill.net – check DNS server and mail server health What exactly am i doing wrong ?
When I check ns Record reports i get this error
Would appreciate any help this point as my websites are down 🙁
July 28, 2014 at 9:40 am
The DNS zone could be wrong, can you try to reset the DNS zone through WHM and see if that helps?
July 28, 2014 at 11:33 am
Wondering which record should i reset ? ns1.havilahandhills.net and ns2.havilahandhills.net ?
July 28, 2014 at 11:36 am
I got this error when resetting Failed to reset zone ns2.havilahandhills.net: Unable to determine the IP address for ns2.havilahandhills.net
August 22, 2014 at 9:36 am
I was looking to migrate from traditional dedicated servers to amazon from long time. But couldnt do due to lack of cpanel/whm install insturctions.
This post helped me a lot.
Thanks bro.
August 24, 2014 at 8:20 pm
Great, I’m glad to hear that you found it useful.
November 7, 2014 at 8:13 pm
When I submit a DNS request to asking for a domain, it returns a private IP address. What I doing wrong? 🙁
March 23, 2015 at 3:24 pm
Hi say I have 10.20.30.40 assigned as the Private IP of my instance and my Elastic IP is 90.91.92.93. My domain say http://www.mysite.com points it’s A record at 90.91.92.93 at the registrar Even if I stop my instance which is running Cloudlinux and WHM (CLOUDLINUX 6.6 x86_64 xenpv – server1 WHM 11.46.3 (build 1) ) the instance functionality wont allow me to create another private IP address (link deactivated).Regardless I am happy to use the nameservers at my Registrar say ns1.myreg.com and ns2.myreg.com who happen to be NameSilo.
If my domain is http://www.mysite.com and I add domains like user1.mysite.com and user2.mysite.com under Create Account in WHM all my sites redirect to the cpanel default page: http://user1.mysite.com/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi etc… despite having an index.html file in their respective public_html. Using “Basic cPanel & WHM Setup” I set my IP to use 10.20.30.40 instead of 90.91.92.93 and reset the DNS zone but WHM hangs. What should the hostname of the server IP be given values above and what IP’s should I be using for the “Primary Resolver”. Some places state use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for Google and other reference an Amazon one 172…. or something OR should I be using IPs relating to my nameservers IP?
Totally lost and would appreciate help.
Thanks
March 24, 2015 at 11:42 pm
Hi,
Have I become a registered user on cPanel to install WHM/cPanel in my instance no AWS?
Does AWS offer any type of web service that come with WHM/cPanel installed??
Thanks.
June 10, 2015 at 1:00 pm
There may be in the AWS marketplace. I see CloudLinux as an option which may help?
March 24, 2015 at 11:51 pm
On more thing: MySQL, FTP Server, MailServer are installed with WHM/cPanel?
I’m a VPS user for a lot of years but all of that VPS that I used came with WHM/cPanel, MySQL Server, FTP Server, MailServer, WebMail installed, so I´m afraid to make all of this configuration by myself.
Thanks.
June 10, 2015 at 1:01 pm
Yes, WHM provides all the necessary services such as the web server (Apache), the pop/imap mail server (Dovecot), the smtp server (Exim), FTP server (PureFTP), etc… Some of these services have different options as well.
June 10, 2015 at 12:51 pm
First thank you and congratulations for the content, has helped me a lot, my installation is still not working, may I ask what information goes in Network Setup > Change Hostname > Current Hostname and also in Network Setup > Resolver Configuration > Primary Resolver and Secondary Resolve. There at the top’m having the information: CENTOS 7.1 x86_64 xenhvm – ip-10-0-0-4 WHM 11.50.0 (build 10) [TRIAL] Load Averages: 0.02 0.03 0.05 Secure Connection Secure Connection
June 10, 2015 at 1:06 pm
Thank you, I’m glad to hear that the article helped you.
I believe the hostname is automatically set by WHM during installation and it will resolve back to your nameservers that you configure.
Why is your installation not working? What is wrong exactly?
June 10, 2015 at 1:58 pm
When I was going on DNS Functions > NS Record Report was empty, but has just been completed, the Godaddy delay was 24 hours to propagate. In Network Setup > Change Hostname > Current Hostname is something like ip-10-0-0-4.sa-east-1.compute.internal it? Network Setup > Resolver Configuration > Primary Resolver is with ip 10.0.0.2 and Secondary Resolver is empty, is it anyway? I will point out the records of a customer, takes place ip`s Or only the names?
June 12, 2015 at 12:35 pm
Friend, when I point an account by the registrar for the dns whm returns the error timeout, the whm domain is registered with GoDaddy, I have to change anything else in the Godaddy DNS zone file?
June 22, 2015 at 8:16 pm
No, there isn’t anything else you should have to do at GoDaddy other than register your two nameservers and point your domain to them.
GoDaddy can be very slow with updating DNS records compared to other registrars though so I don’t recommend GoDaddy to anyone for this specific reason.
We are our own registrar at Tribulant Software if you are interested in registering your domain with us: http://tribulant.com/hosting/domainchecker.php . The DNS updates are quick as well.
November 28, 2015 at 5:12 am
I had an issue where Bind DNS was not responding to queries. I took a look at named.conf and had to change to allow queries. Now it works perfect. Thanks for your post.
March 30, 2016 at 1:47 pm
Antonie hello, nice post. correctly followed his instructions using 2 ips elastic, but my dominio.com.br did not identify the dns, returns with error. Have any further configuration in aws?
att.
Vicente
June 15, 2018 at 4:51 pm
how can i add dedicated ips for ssl purposes from amazon to whm?