Issues with Setting Custom Nameservers and Master Zone in Cloudflare

Website, Application, Performance DNS & Network
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What is the name of the domain?

What is the issue you’re encountering

Issues with Setting Custom Nameservers and Master Zone in Cloudflare

What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?

Hi everyone,

I’m currently facing an issue where I’ve set up custom nameservers for my domain, which is managed by Cloudflare, and I’m trying to ensure that the zones for domains hosted on my own servers (e.g., server1.webhostmost.com, server2.webhostmost.com, etc.) sync with Cloudflare’s master zone.

Here’s what I’m trying to achieve:

Cloudflare as the Master DNS Zone: I want Cloudflare to act as the authoritative DNS server for all my hosted domains. All the DNS records (A, MX, etc.) are stored and managed in Cloudflare.

Custom Nameservers: I’ve set up custom nameservers (e.g., ns1.server1.webhostmost.com, ns2.server2.webhostmost.com, etc.) that I want to act as secondary nameservers (slaves) for these domains.

Slave Nameservers: My own servers will act as secondary nameservers. These should pull the zone data from Cloudflare and respond with the same records that Cloudflare holds.

Here’s where the problem lies:

I’ve noticed that my custom nameservers aren’t pulling the zone data correctly from Cloudflare. The zones seem to be missing or unavailable on my custom NS, and querying the nameservers returns a REFUSED status.
I’ve set up the slave zone configuration on my servers, but it seems Cloudflare isn’t allowing zone transfers (AXFR) to my slave nameservers.
My Questions:
How can I configure my custom nameservers to pull data directly from Cloudflare’s master zone?
Is there a way to enable AXFR (zone transfer) in Cloudflare for custom nameservers, or is there another approach I should take to sync the records?
Has anyone successfully set up custom nameservers while using Cloudflare as the authoritative DNS? What steps did you take to make it work?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I want to ensure that all of my users hosted on my servers can benefit from the custom NS while maintaining Cloudflare’s authoritative control over DNS records.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

What feature, service or problem is this related to?

DNS records

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Do you have an Enterprise plan?

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Hi, no I’m using Business plan, is that make any difference? Custom Nameservers are available on Business plan as I understand.

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Custom nameservers are just a “vanity” option, allowing you to use your domain as the nameserver names - they still use Cloudflare DNS servers.

Using Cloudflare as Primary/Secondary DNS and zone transfers require an Enterprise plan as in the link above.

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