Unexpected DNS records added after modifying "Production Domains"

Support
,
1

Hello Netlify community and support team,

I’m experiencing an unexpected and serious issue related to DNS records after making changes to my “Production Domains.”

Issue Description:

After adding a new domain to my “Production Domains,” I noticed that all of my registered domains within Netlify had the following DNS records automatically added:

arduinoCopy code

autoairdrop.io
3600
IN
NETLIFY
auto-airdrop.netlify.app

www.autoairdrop.io
3600
IN
NETLIFY
auto-airdrop.netlify.app

These records pointed my domains to a Netlify hosted app, which is not the intended destination for my production website. This has led to significant downtime, with my primary website being unavailable for approximately two days.

To resolve the issue, I removed the DNS records and subsequently removed the domain I had added to “Production Domains.” To my surprise, upon removing the domain, the same unwanted DNS records were automatically re-added.

Impact:

This unexpected behavior has severely impacted my website’s accessibility and disrupted my infrastructure. I urgently need to understand:

  1. Why these DNS records were automatically added.
  2. How I can prevent this from happening in the future.

I appreciate any guidance or clarification on this matter. It’s critical for me to maintain stability and reliability for my users.

Thank you for your time and support.

2

Hi, @autoairdrop. You had added those domains to your site at Netlify here:

https://app.netlify.com/sites/auto-airdrop/domain-management#production-domains

That tells Netlify you want Netlify hosting those domains.

You also have the DNS service for many of the domains listed on that page configured to use Netlify DNS.

When you make changes to the domain names on that list, the service checks those domains to see if they use Netlify DNS. If they do not, the workflow is to use the external DNS instructions.

However, if the domains do use Netlify DNS, our service checks to see if the required NETLIFY type DNS records exist to point the domain to our hosting. If they do not exist, our service creates them.

If you don’t want Netlify to create those NETLIFY type DNS records, there are two ways to prevent that. Either:

  • do not add the domain names to your sites at Netlify

or:

  • do not use Netlify DNS for said domain names

As you did both (configured the domains to use Netlify DNS and also added the domain to your sites at Netlify), the NETLIFY type records were created. Again, they are required records for our service to host the site using those domains.

If there are other questions about this, reply here anytime.