DNS Redundancy Questions

[bigdessert]

We have a 1 server setup. Right now all dns, web, and email are hosted from this single box.

We wish to bring in a server2 and have dns cluster setup, this would also host mirrors of email and web sites from server1.

What i want to know is what is the best way to setup the DNS cluster/nameservers?

would it be

ns1.domain.com pointing to server1 dns
ns2.domain.com pointing to server2 dns?

if that is the case and lets say server 2 goes down, wouldnt that mean the 50% of hits to the web site would be denied as ns2 is down? The reason i ask this is that to my understanding nameservers do not have priority, they are randomly hit.

I am trying to provide some small bit of redundacy.

Thanks...

[mtindor]

You'd only have that problem if the machine with the nonworking DNS had Bind (named) listening but not responding authoritatively.

If, for instance, ns1 was down (unreachable / offline completely / unplugged), ns2 would be queried for the data.

If ns1 was up and named was running (but for some reason misconfigured and not answering queries in the way that it should), then you'd have a problem where some people would be getting proper responses to queries and some would not.

Mike