Off the top of my head... you don't want to use a web GUI to manage your zone; your zone is programmatically generated; you want other people (who have access to your server) to be able to manage their zone without giving then linode control panel access; you actually keep your master zone file on your home machine and rsync it to your linode when you change it; ...

There's more reasons than just the redundancy question.

And as for redundancy, you're wrong. It's possible for a linode DNS server to go down but your linode remain up and working; hey, it's just another server so can suffer downtime!

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Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

Because in my case, the DNS records are managed via Virtualmin. I find it easier to operate this way and still get the redundancy I need.

How am I wrong?

Of course it's possible for a Linode DNS server to go down... but are you aware (as someone already pointed out in this thread) that Linode has multiple DNS servers in their different datacenters? The possibility of multiple DCs going offline, or all the DNS hosts going offline at once, all while a single linode stays up is astronomical. That's the whole point of redundancy.

4 linode secondary DNS servers and your own machine as a primary DNS server = 5 active servers. That's clearly more redundancy than 4 servers if they can independently fail. I described one failure mode where that situation provides more redundancy than just using the linode servers.

Now a _DIFFERENT_ question is whether this is overkill and useless, but that's not what you said; "You get the same redundancy by using their servers exclusively." That's wrong, as demonstrated. You get redundancy in both solutions but not the _same_ redundancy.

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Rgds

Stephen

(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

I vote against the use of free 3rd party and some of the paid DNS services due to that fact many of them are outdated and are vulnerable to things such as DNS poisoning. Using your domain register would be MUCH safer.

Why do you believe that your registrar's DNS system is any more up-to-date than a 3rd party's system? I'd actually guess the other way around: someone dedicated to providing a paid DNS service is far more likely to keep current than a registrar.

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The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world.
-- seen on the net

I am using dnsmadeasy and appreciate the failover between linodes in Dallas and Newark.