The A Record points your hostname to an IP address. The A in A record stands for Address. This is one of the most frequently used records in the DNS Zones and it is an essential part of your DNS configuration. The record A specifies IP address (IPv4) for given host. In other words, it resolves a domain name (or points the domain name) to the correct location by means of the IP address. You can achieve a lot with A records, like using multiple A records for the same domain for redundancy and fallbacks. You could point multiple names to the same address, in this way each would have its own A record pointing to that same IP address.
The DNS A record has the following look in your ClouDNS Control Panel:
| Host | Type | Points to: | TTL |
| hostname.com | A | ip.of.your.website | 1 Hour |
Let's say you have a website. That site is hosted on a web server with the corresponding IP address for it. You also have purchased a domain name for your site. Now you need to link them. And here is where the A record comes. It simply maps your domain to your server's IP address. This allows a user to connect and load a website, without the need of memorizing and typing the actual IP address of the website. The user's web browser automatically does the job by sending a query to a DNS resolver.
Log in your ClouDNS account, enter your DNS zone management page, and click on the Add new record button. For Type choose "A" and type as follow:
Type: A
TTL: 1 Hour
Host:
Points to: ip.of.your.website
The A records and the CNAME records are the two most commonly used records and sometimes you can easily get confused when to use A and when CNAME. With A record, the hostname is resolved to the corresponding IP address. On the other hand, CNAME records (for canonical name) map your hostname to another hostname. This is useful for pointing many hosts to the same place and updating them easily. An example of this can be seen below:
| Host | Type | Points to: | TTL |
| panel.cloudns.net | A | 185.107.80.223 | 1 Hour |
| www.panel.cloudns.net | CNAME | panel.cloudns.net | 1 Hour |
You can perform a dig lookup for the relevant domain name with the following Dig command:
$ dig cloudns.net
You can check the DNS A record with Nslookup as well. A sample is shown below:
$ nslookup cloudns.net
The outputs for both methods will show which IP addresses this domain resolves to.
ClouDNS provides full support for A records for all our DNS services, including the listed below. Just write to our technical support, if you need any assistance with your DNS records configuration. Our Technical Support team is online for you 24/7 via live chat and tickets.