Dns has a bunch of records pointing to itself - how to change a-record without taking down email?

Question

SO I went to put a new website live and got into my clients cpanel to change the a-record for the website - however it's a really weird set up - most of the records point back to the domain itself - and I know that changing the a-record will stop their email dead.

The first a-record points to a IP address - domainname.com - 111.222.333.444

A cname record: www.domainname.com points to domainname.com

A cname record: mail.domainname.com points to domainname.com

Then there's a text record (domainname.com) with the record: v=spf1 a mx ptr include:rhostbh.com ?all

Finally, in a different part of c-panel, there's the mx record that points to: domainame.com

Then there's a bunch more records that point to the same IP address as before, such as autoconfig.domainname.com and autodiscover.doamainname.com.

So the question is, how do I change the main a-records (domainname.com and www.domainname.com putting the new site live) without taking out the email?

Answer 1

1. Delete mail.domainname.com CNAME
2. Create A record: mail.domainname.com A 111.222.233.244
3. Modify MX to point to mail.domainname.com
4. Wait for TTL to expire
5. Modify domainname.com as required